


Loved by (Almost) No One

by asamis_jodhpurs



Series: Crime Kids AU [1]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Animal Death, Child Abuse, Coming of Age, Emerald is very small and she has no money, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Emerald, Kid Mercury, Marcus Black's A+ Parenting, Mercury is a feral wolf-child out of water, Mostly Gen, Snark, So you can imagine the kind of stress that she is under, and, except for some emotionally charged hugs, which is to say
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:08:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 28
Words: 213,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26180926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asamis_jodhpurs/pseuds/asamis_jodhpurs
Summary: Mercury is eight when his father joins up with Salem's faction and takes a post in Vale, and it takes him no time at all to decide that he hates every last thing about the city except for maybe this green-haired pickpocket.Emerald's never had a friend before, and she really should know better than to start with this angry weirdo who ruined her latest heist.Or, two murder children learn to protect and care for each other while growing up in genuinely awful circumstances.Featuring snark, gratuitous literary references, and misdemeanors galore, this is the Partners in Crime childhood best friends AU that I hope to god somebody asked for.
Relationships: Mercury Black & Emerald Sustrai, Mercury Black/Emerald Sustrai
Series: Crime Kids AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1901275
Comments: 602
Kudos: 267





	1. Greenie Meets the Wolfboy

**Author's Note:**

> In which Mercury foils a heist and Emerald cannot catch a break.

It took Mercury all of six hours to decide that he hated the city of Vale and every last one of its inhabitants.

At their old house in the mountains, there’d been no one but him and Dad and their husky, Fenri, plus the guys who showed up in a bullhead with provisions twice a month and called Dad away on jobs. Out there, when Dad was away, he had the woods to keep him company. The woods, and Fenri. She could bring down a deer with a single leap and snap of her jaws, which came in handy when Dad accidentally-on-purpose forgot to leave them with enough food while he was away. She was big enough that on winter nights when Dad wasn’t there to tell him how weak it was to want warmth, Mercury could let her hop into bed with him and curl up along the length of his back, radiating softness and dog-smell and a taken-care-of feeling that he wasn’t strong enough to earn from Dad yet.

But then something had gone south with the guys who brought the provisions, and Dad had had to kill them. And Mercury had had to throw all his clothes in a box while tiptoeing around the prone bodies of the guys who brought the provisions and dodging the bottles Dad didn’t have room to carry, the ones he let shatter against the walls so the glass made Mercury’s aura flicker.

And he had had to shoot Fenri.

Dad had said that they’d have no use for a dog in the city and that Mercury would feel stronger after he got rid of her. But the only thing he’d felt after he’d leveled the revolver at those bright, trusting eyes the same shade of grey as his own and pulled the trigger was a stinging behind his eyes that he knew was Not Allowed.

He’d handed the revolver back to his father and been rewarded with a cold stare and a curled lip that didn’t turn into a strike to the face.

And so here he was, in this flat, stinking city where he now held the title of The Guy Who Brought Provisions, and nothing, _nothing_ , he saw on the two-mile walk from their safehouse in the suburbs to the grocery store a few blocks from the docks had been worth losing Fenri.

The summer sun sank into the asphalt and made him feel like he was going to sweat through his jacket, and people kept staring at him with worry in their eyes, like an almost-nine-year-old assassin-in-training was too incompetent to make a simple grocery run. It made him want to kick each and every one of them in the shins with his steel-toed boots. This mission would be simple. Dad had even written him a list but insisted the act was a one-time favor.

 _An assassin doesn’t need reminding of his target during a job,_ he’d said, and Mercury had narrowly held himself back from observing that he wasn’t going to be assassinating the produce.

In the end, though, it wasn’t the summer heat or the condescending looks that broke him. It was the milk.

Why in the gods’ names did these people need so many kinds of milk?

His dad’s jagged handwriting just read _Milk,_ which Mercury had figured would be enough information for him to grab the right carton and shove it in the ice dust-laced bag that would keep it cool on the walk back.

But apparently he’d been wrong because the people of Vale were just _too good_ to make due with a single kind of milk. No wonder Dad had said city folk were easy pickings.

The problem was that Mercury had no way of telling the different kinds of milk apart, or of telling which kind Dad would hate the least.

Mercury knew what all the letters meant. Dad had made sure he knew all his letters, slapped a kitchen knife across his knuckles when he got the spellings wrong. The trouble was that the letters refused to cooperate with Mercury’s brain, especially when they were printed in white on bright colors like these stupid labels.

They all fell together in a mishmash of consonants, and he’d probably shot Fenri only for Dad to beat him into the new floor because he was too stupid to choose the right carton.

The letters were starting to give him a headache. There was nothing for it. He opened the door of the refrigerated aisle, stuck his hand out at shoulder height, and grabbed the first carton he touched.

He shoved it into his bag and decided that the city of Vale was going to pay for its offense. Dad had expressly told him to bring back a receipt so that he could be sure Mercury hadn’t swindled him, but if he took something small without paying for it…

His eyes landed on a chocolate bar in the rack by the cash register, one that, by the looks of the label, had peanuts in it. The guys who brought provisions had sometimes brought jars of them, and they’d served him well during those long days under the shadows of the trees.

The candy bar would do.

Now, to case the scene of his crime. The guy behind the furthest of the two cash registers was ancient and looked like he could be blown over by a stiff breeze. Not a problem. The second cashier was younger—not that it was hard to be younger than a guy who probably remembered the Great War—and built like a fridge. He had a forward hunch to his shoulders that suggested he wouldn’t mind a fight. A potential problem.

The other shoppers were harried and distracted, meaning only occupant of the store that Mercury couldn’t easily categorize was the girl loitering in the health food aisle.

She was about his age, her hair in pale green pigtails that fell to her waist, and her deep red eyes were fixed on the cashiers with the same intent look that Mercury himself had turned to them just moments before. She had a large, misshapen backpack hiked up onto her shoulders, and, strangest of all, coiled beneath it, was what appeared to be a length of garden hose.

_Interesting._

The girl froze in the process of reaching out for a protein bar, eyes narrowing and landing on Mercury. With a glare, she stuck her tongue out at him. Because no one was here to tell him to remain professional, he stuck his tongue out right back before retreating behind the end-cap. Greenie clearly had her own racket going on, and whatever it was, it would only complicate his own plan.

What _was_ her racket, exactly?

He found himself leaning back around the corner to catch a glimpse of her. She’d started ferreting the protein bars away in her backpack with a speed that was genuinely impressive. And the big cashier was starting to look her way, a suspicious frown forming on his face.

Greenie glanced over her shoulder, her hands stilling. Then she raised two fingers to her temple and squinted. Instantly, the big guy relaxed and turned back to the customer who’d just plopped a bunch of bananas down in front of him. Mercury backed around the end cap again, fighting down his curiosity.

She was his age, and she’d already unlocked her Semblance. Whatever it was, it was powerful, one of the first he’d ever seen in action. Dad would have ripped it out of her in seconds like he had with the guy from the bullhead who kept turning invisible, but still, it was impressive. It meant that Greenie was a professional, that she was Doing a Job, just like he was.

He lugged his bag over to the cash register manned by the big guy just as Greenie and her backpack full of stolen snacks reached the old guy’s station. While the big guy was scanning what he’d bought, Mercury watched Greenie pick up a package of some kind of fruit candy that glowed the same yellow as the electricity dust Dad kept in his weapon. In their gloves, Mercury’s hands smarted at the memory.

He shook his head. _Focus._

Mercury slapped his allotted lien down on the counter and, while the guy was counting change, slipped the peanut bar off of the rack and into the palm of his hand. Not as smooth as Greenie by a long shot, but still respectable.

Greenie made small talk with the old guy, sometimes gesturing with the fruit straws. They must be her distraction purchase, Mercury figured, to keep him from asking too many questions about the backpack.

But when Greenie started toward the door, she didn’t set a single lien down on the counter, and the old guy waved her on anyway with a smile.

So, apparently all Mercury’s stealth had been for nothing because this store had gone soft so completely that it actually gave free candy to children. He picked up his bag when the big guy handed it to him and headed for the door after Greenie.

“Wait a second.” The big guy’s tone did not bode well, and Mercury froze. Greenie did the same a couple paces in front of him. Mercury turned, and the big guy nodded to the candy bar in his hand. “You planning to pay for that?”

Mercury scoffed. “It was free.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Just like hers was.”

Gears seemed to turn in the big guy’s head, a frown forming on his face as his gaze shifted over Mercury’s shoulder. Mercury whipped around at the sound of rustling behind himself to see Greenie making a mad dash for the door and flashing him a gesture that Dad had thrown at the guys from the bullhead shortly before things went south.

She had been Doing a Job, and Mercury had ruined it. He’d seen her use her Semblance and still been too stupid to realize she was using it a second time. Dad would have left his jaw so swollen he couldn’t talk for a screw-up that disastrous.

“Thief!” the big guy exclaimed, and he barreled after her. Greenie slammed through the door and fled with the big cashier hot on her heels, and Mercury hurried out after them with his hard-earned candy bar before the old guy could give chase.

When the door closed behind him, he paused. His route back to the suburbs stretched out to his left, a river of sidewalk that led, inexorably, back to Dad. To his right, he could see a flash of green hair whipping around a corner into an alley with the big guy not far behind.

He had his candy bar. He had no stake in whatever Greenie had gotten herself into.

_Only she didn’t get herself into it. My idiot mouth did._

She’d been a professional, through and through, and he’d screwed it up for her.

Mercury heaved a sigh, dropped the candy bar into the bag with the rest of his groceries, and ran after her.

* * *

It was not Emerald’s day.

Then again, the days that _had_ been Emerald’s she could count on one hand.

Still, the fact that the alley she’d fled down terminated in a dead end stung a little. She skidded to a halt about six feet from the brick wall blocking her path and took stock of her surroundings. A few crates that would provide about two seconds of cover—useless. She looked up and allowed herself a flicker of hope. The building to her left was only one story tall, its roof perfectly flat and made of crappy corrugated tin.

As the cashier rounded the corner, she activated her Semblance, erasing herself from the vision of the alley he saw. It wouldn’t buy her much time, but she hoped it would be enough. She’d already had to use her Semblance twice in the store, and the ominous beginnings of a headache thumped at the back of her brain.

“I know you’re down here, kid,” the cashier called out, his eyes scanning the alley uselessly. “I’m not gonna hurt you. We’re just gonna call your parents and get you sent home.”

Emerald set her jaw. She wasn’t going back to the godsdamn orphanage, not after all the work she’d done to get free of the place, of the adults who wouldn’t feed her enough, the boys who kept pulling her hair, the girls who wouldn’t play with her because they were scared of her eyes. Alone wasn’t much, but it was better than ignored.

And some idiot kid who looked like he’d been raised by wolves was _this close_ to ruining it for her.

With a flick of her wrist, she uncoiled the garden hose she kept stowed under her pack and caught the mini-pick that she’d tied to the end of it. She almost pitied the ‘burb-dweller whose garden shed she’d looted to make her weapon. Almost.

The cashier was getting closer, looking behind the crates. He was only a few feet from Emerald now.

Directing a little more energy into her Semblance to cancel out the noise and fighting back the pounding behind her eyes, she threw the pick, letting a little of her aura run down the hose to make sure the pick lodged itself in the tin of the roof. She yanked on the hose. It held.

Then the cashier stuck his arm out blindly, and it brushed against her own. With a squeak, Emerald recoiled, her concentration ruined. The man’s eyes fixed on her as she flickered into visibility.

Emerald doubled up her fists, ready to go down fighting, when the stupid wolf-boy who’d blown her cover came skidding around the corner into the alley. Emerald snarled. Was ruining her job not enough for him? He was sprinting so quickly his hands blurred at his sides, like sinking her heist was a mission he’d received from the gods.

And then the dumb wolf boy did the most amazing thing Emerald had ever seen.

Something in his face hardened, and before the cashier had fully turned to face him, he slammed his boot into the back of the guy’s leg, making him stumble. In a single, fluid motion, the wolf-boy that Emerald was beginning to suspect was not dumb spun around his target so that he stood between Emerald and the cashier. One leg kicked out, catching the guy in the gut and sending him sprawling, at which point the other leg was already snapping upward to crack into the cashier’s chin, knocking him unconscious.

The entire process took less than two seconds.

It took, in fact, the exact amount of time that it took the cashier to bellow, _“Help! Police!”_ at the top of his lungs.

Emerald and the wolf-boy swore in unison, and then Emerald caught the hose in both hands, braced her feet on the wall, and ran up to the roof. She could, in theory, have left the wolf-boy to the cops at that point, yanked up the hose and left him to learn a lesson in keeping his nose out of other people’s business. Except he’d saved her, and Emerald had seen what happened to small-time thieves who didn’t pay their debts.

She crawled to the edge of the roof, pressing herself flat to the metal to stay hidden from anyone on the ground, and peered over the side. The wolf-boy was glancing between the hose and the mouth of the alley, like he thought he still had time to make a run for it. Obviously, he didn’t know that he was standing in the territory of Vale that was occupied by un-dumb cops.

“Are you stupid?” she hissed, and the boy’s head jerked upward, grey eyes narrowing. “Get up here!”

The wolf-boy cast one last glance down the alley. Bootsteps sounded from the street. Emerald waved him up frantically, too scared to make any noise.

The wolf-boy nodded, and then broke his own record for the most amazing thing Emerald had ever seen. He ran about a third of the way up the wall, like Emerald had, but then he bent his knees and launched himself out in an arc, letting the hose guide the path of his jump. He must have had his aura unlocked, because there was no way a kid Emerald’s age could jump that high naturally.

There were shouts from the street, rushing toward the corner of the alley.

The wolf-boy flipped, twisting in midair, and landed beside Emerald with a smirk on his face. He hadn’t even spilled his bag of groceries. The smirk turned into a scowl of indignation when Emerald grabbed his hand—through its stupid fingerless glove—and yanked him down so he landed on his back beside her just as the cops rounded the corner.

“Hey! Wha—” Emerald clamped a hand over his mouth. He bit her.

The _nerve_ of this kid!

Emerald kept her hand right where it was, flaring her aura to ward off the wolf-boy’s teeth, and bugged her eyes out at him. She hoped that that expression was enough to relay the message, _Cops, you idiot!_

In response, the wolf-boy rolled his eyes so dramatically that his entire head moved in a circle.

Emerald decided that was acknowledgement enough for her to remove her hand before it could get bitten again.

“What do you figure, a mugging?” The cops must have reached the prone form of the cashier by now.

“He’s from the shop next door, I bet. See the apron?”

Two cops, by the sound of it, neither of them intent on chasing after the assailant. When one of them called in an ambulance, Emerald glanced at the wolf-boy and saw, to her surprise, a look of quiet alarm on his face.

 _What do we do?_ He mouthed, nodding toward the edge of the roof.

For someone who could sink a grown man in less than two seconds, he didn’t seem to know much about getting away from the scene of a crime.

In reply, Emerald pressed a finger to her lips and rolled over onto her stomach. The wolf-boy mimicked her. Slowly, keeping the hose looped around her forearms, she crawled along the flat surface of the roof toward its center, and the wolf-boy kept pace with her, neither of them making a sound, and there was something… un-lonely about having someone next to her, moving the same way she was.

When they reached the center of the roof, invisible from the ground on every side, Emerald hopped to her feet. She reached down to the wolf-boy to help him up, and he glared like her hand was coated in manure. The feeling of un-loneliness withered into nothing.

Emerald pulled back her hand like it had been stung by a hornet. _Stupid._ The wolf-boy climbed back to his feet, that defiant scowl still in place.

“Now what, Greenie?” he asked, and Emerald found a matching scowl forming on her own face. Everyone always left her. She’d been stupid to think this dumb, feral boy would be an exception.

Well. Let him see how it felt to get left.

“Now I ditch you, you jerk,” she said, and she tore off across the roof at a sprint.

* * *

Oh, it was _on._

Who did this girl think she was? He saved her, and then she insulted him, acted like he wasn’t even capable of standing up on his own. And now, she had the gall to say _he_ was the jerk, to act like she had a prayer of outrunning him. He looped the handle of the grocery bag around his forearm so it’d be out of the way.

Greenie reached the edge of the roof and leapt across the gap between buildings as Mercury broke into a run, determined to reduce her fifteen-foot head start to nothing. If people believed you were weak, Dad said, it started being true. He wasn’t going to let Greenie think he was weak.

Mercury launched himself into the air, letting his aura carry him far past the start of the next roof. He rolled as he landed and came up running, shaving off four feet of Greenie’s lead. She glanced over her shoulder with a sneer of annoyance and jigged to the right just as she reached the next gap between roofs, forcing Mercury to stumble and abort the jump he’d been about to fling himself into.

In the direction Greenie was running now, the buildings got higher and fancier with each block, getting closer to the heart of the city. She probably thought that garden hose she hauled around would give her the advantage.

Mercury would make sure she thought wrong.

The next roof Greenie leapt onto wasn’t flat, and she landed at the top of the roofline, wobbling for a moment before she found her balance.

_Amateur._

Mercury dove through the air after her, landing on his hands and flipping without missing a beat. Five more feet shaved off of Greenie’s lead.

He didn’t really know what he wanted to do when he caught up with her—Dad would say he should shove her off the roof to make her respect him, but Mercury was pretty sure he didn’t want to do that, even if she had stuck her tongue out at him.

For now, it didn’t matter. For now, he was vaulting over roofs, chasing the green gleam of her pigtails. His speed turned the sluggish summer air into a mountain breeze, and in the joy of motion, his body forgot that anyone could hurt it. There, for a moment, was the feeling of racing along under the trees with Fenri at his side.

A traitorous little corner of him hoped that he would never catch up, that he could keep running forever.

After they’d run nearly a mile over the jagged rooftops of Vale, Greenie landed about eight feet above him on the gable of an old, stone building with stained-glass windows and turned to glower down at him.

“Why are you still following me?” There was a wary look in her dark red eyes. Maybe she didn’t think he was weak after all.

The question drew Mercury to a halt.

There was no tactical reason to follow her. In fact, chasing her had led him far from his route home, might even get him in trouble with Dad. He stiffened, shame rising in his chest. At the old house, he’d get distracted by birds. There were black ones, with bright red spots on their wings, that he always chased after, trying to catch sight of that flash of crimson that only shone when they flew.

Dad had said distractions would get him killed, had done his best to beat it out of him. But here Mercury was, a mile from the grocery store, chasing a weird girl who hated him.

He wished he had a better answer to give.

“‘Cause I wanted to, I guess.” He shrugged.

At that, Greenie’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Oh.” She stared at him like he’d handed her a year’s supply of that vile-looking yellow candy, a quiet smile forming on her face.

Greenie hopped down from the gable, landing beside him.

He’d given her the stupidest answer possible. Why was she suddenly acting like she didn’t hate him? Was it a trap?

Mercury leaned away from her. “Also, there’s no way you’re faster than me.”

Greenie raised an eyebrow. “No way?”

Mercury frowned a frown that he really hoped looked cool. “None.”

Greenie smiled again—what was that _about?_ —and nodded at a point over Mercury’s shoulder. Following her gaze, almost back the way they’d come, he saw a metal spire rising out of the balconied roof of a high, brownstone building.

“Race you!” She shot him a fierce grin, and like that, they were off again.

He had to admit, Greenie really was quick. She kept pace with him easily until they reached the edge of the first rooftop, but Mercury’s aura-boosted jump over the gap left her in the dust. He hit the ground running, and now that Greenie couldn’t see him, he let himself smile. Let himself laugh even.

For once in his life, he was going to win.

The next building in his path was higher, and even the strongest jump he could manage left him clawing at the roofline, barely getting a hold. As he swung himself up onto the roof, Greenie’s pick embedded itself in the shingles by his foot. He kept running, even as he imagined her racing up the side of the building, starting after him.

This roof ended in a sheer drop, falling away for three stories to reveal two more low buildings like the first he’d run across and the building with the spire, his goal, rising like a cliff on the other side of the flat region.

Mercury didn’t quite trust his aura to survive the kind of fall that was yawning in front of him, so he turned around, catching a brief glimpse of the intent look on Greenie’s face as she chased after him. He stepped off the roof backward, channeling his aura into his hands and letting them catch him once, twice, three times, as he fell down the building in increments.

He landed in a crouch and grinned. There was no way Greenie could beat him in the straight footrace that these flat roofs presented. He took off, running more quickly than he ever had in his life, when he heard Greenie let out a cry.

He looked back, still running, briefly, stupidly afraid that she might be hurt. If she couldn’t keep her balance on a roof, that was her business, Dad would say. Any injury you were too slow or stupid to prevent was your own fault.

But Greenie wasn’t hurt. The shout had been a sound of effort as she launched herself straight out from the high roof, her body coiling and then stretching out like a squirrel’s. With her left hand, she flung her pick, and it looped around a lightning rod on a building beside the flat stretch, trailing the shining green of the garden hose behind it.

Mercury’s pace slowed as Greenie soared through the air, looking, for a moment, like gravity had no power over her. Then she was gliding downward, the other end of the hose going taut in her hand and pulling her into a curved path over the ground. At the bottom of her arc, she passed Mercury, moving so quickly that she was little more than a blur of green and brown. As the hose pulled her back up, Greenie gave an almost casual flick of her wrist, freeing her pick from the lightning rod and letting herself drift weightlessly back to earth mere feet from the target building.

Was it the coolest thing Mercury had ever seen? Maybe. Was he going to let that make him forget how badly he wanted to win? _No._

He piled on speed as Greenie hurled her pick again, letting it catch on the edge of the target rooftop. He threw himself over the gap between the two low buildings, letting his momentum carry him halfway across the second rooftop, but Greenie was already speeding up the hose, and he threw himself into the air again, but she’d already reached the roof, and _damnit_ , he had lost, why did he always have to lose, why was he never strong enough, oh wow that wall was coming up pretty fast, he should probably—

Mercury smashed into the wall of the target building like a cannonball. Greenie let out a shriek. His aura flickered as all the air fled his lungs, and he didn’t have time to grab a handhold before he was _falling_ and this stupid city was going to kill him in only seven hours and he wouldn’t get to eat his candy bar and Dad would know he’d deserved to die, too weak and stupid to be anything more than an embarrassment.

He was falling face-up, so he saw Greenie’s eyes go wide, her mouth half opening. He saw her throw the pick down at him with all the force her skinny arms could muster. Halfway down the five-story building, Mercury caught it, and the hose brought him to a halt that strained his arms. He braced his legs against the wall, let himself exhale.

Great. He’d lost, and he’d done it in a stupid enough way that his opponent had had to rescue him. If she let go of her end of the hose right now, he’d definitely deserve it.

Instead, he felt himself being pulled steadily upward, Greenie dragging him up the face of the building hand over hand. Mercury shook his head to clear it. He couldn’t let her drag him all the way up the wall like he was baggage. The cost for losing would probably be high as it was, no reason to give her more cause to resent him.

The winner took whatever the winner wanted, Mercury knew, and she’d won.

He ran up the side of the building like he’d seen her do before. When he reached the top, Greenie stuck out her hand, and this time he at least deserved the insult. He heaved himself over the side of the roof on his own, though. No need to let her gloat.

Mercury let himself curl up on his knees, catch his breath. Greenie was watching him with those weird red eyes, biting her lip like she was… worried?

“Gods, for a second there I thought you were gonna get splattered.” She let out a nervous laugh.

“So did I,” said Mercury, waiting for her to slap him or tell him he was stupid, but she just sat there on her heels, staring at him. Maybe she’d forgotten to.

“Uh, you won?” he prompted.

Greenie shrugged. “It wasn’t really fair. I had my weapon and you didn’t. Call it a tie?”

Mercury’s jaw went slack. She couldn’t be letting him get away with a screw-up that big. “I almost got myself killed!”

She threw up her hands. “Fine! You win! Whatever!”

“No, _you_ win!” What was wrong with this place? “You got here first, _and_ you kept me from splattering myself! Obviously!”

Greenie sat back, crossing her arms triumphantly. “Well, when you put it that way.” She smiled and pumped her fist in the air. “Roof Queen!”

She really wasn’t going to do anything to him. And that grin on her face, the dumb, simple joy of it, infected him, and he was smiling too, suddenly.

_What was wrong with this place?_

The winner didn’t want to take anything. At the thought, a weird feeling, sort of like being in debt but without the building dread, welled up inside Mercury.

Greenie didn’t want anything from him, but he wanted to give her something anyway.

“Hiya, Roof Queen,” he said, sticking out a hand. “I’m Mercury.”

* * *

The newly crowned Roof Queen Emerald froze for a moment, her hands clenching around her knees.

Out of the blue, this boy had given her his _name_ , made himself traceable. He couldn’t vanish into thin air now, not without her having some chance of tracking him down again. He had to have known that.

But what if it was a trap? What if he wanted something in exchange? She’d seen him take down the cashier. Even with her Semblance, he could be trouble. If she gave him her name in turn, she’d be just as traceable as the wolf boy—as _Mercury_ —was now.

The self-assured smile on Mercury’s face faded, his mouth twisting as he looked away.

“Sorry,” he muttered, starting to retract his hand. “Stupid.”

“No, wait!” Emerald’s hand shot out and caught his, the wool of his glove a little scratchy against her palm. “Emerald. I’m Emerald.”

“Emerald,” he repeated, trying out the sound of it as they shook hands. “So I wasn’t _too_ far off with ‘Greenie.’”

Emerald wrinkled her nose and took her hand back. “It doesn’t sound as good. But I think I wasn’t too far off with ‘Wolfboy’ either.”

“Wait, Wolfboy?” Mercury’s eyes lit up. “Now _that’s_ a cool nickname.”

_No, it’s not._

Emerald crossed her arms. “It was _s’posed_ to be an insult. Because you’re grey, and kinda dumb.”

Mercury scoffed. “Wolves are smart!”

Because he’d just slammed himself into a brick wall, Emerald could appreciate the fact that Mercury had made no effort to defend his own intelligence.

Emerald smirked. “Oh yeah? And what makes you say that?”

Mercury furrowed his brow in confusion.

“I’ve met wolves?” he said, as if it were obvious. “And they seemed smart?”

Okay, there was no _way_ this kid was from Vale. Emerald had never seen any animal bigger than a full-sized poodle. Now she had _so_ many questions.

“You’re from outside the kingdoms, then!” she leaned forward. “I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t from Vale. What’s it like out there? Are there bandits?” Okay, she had two questions, but they were important ones.

Mercury shrugged and looked out over the edge of the building. “A lot more trees. A lot more Grimm. Less people. Never met any bandits.” More quietly, he added, “More space for dogs.”

For a second, he looked sad, but a frown covered the softer expression almost instantly. Weird. There was nothing about Mercury that wasn’t weird.

“You just moved here?” Emerald asked. It would explain how clueless he’d been during her heist, and how he was dressed for autumn instead of summer, the too-big, orange-brown jacket clashing horribly with his hair and probably giving him heatstroke.

Mercury nodded. “Yeah, me and my dad just got in this morning.”

 _Hmmm._ No mom. Given how drastic the move was, Emerald’s best bet was a truly ugly divorce. A couple of the kids in the orphanage had ended up being dumped there because their parents split. They’d both had hair-trigger tempers that made it easy for Emerald to swipe their food when the other kids teased them. Probably best not to poke at a nerve like that, then.

Emerald ran down a more useful line of questioning. “What part of the city?”

“Uh,” Mercury got up on his knees and leaned over the edge of the roof, pointing back toward the grocery store. Emerald found herself stretching out a hand so she’d be ready to catch him if he pitched over the side. “About three miles that way. The buildings are shorter and they all look the same.”

Emerald smirked. “Well, look at you. A ‘burb-dweller.”

“What does _that_ mean?”

“Usually? That you’re boring and easy to steal from.” Emerald ran a hand over the coils of her hose. “This was a ‘burb-dweller’s.”

Mercury crossed his arms. “I am _not_ boring.” Faster than thought, Emerald flicked a hand out, used a quick jolt of her Semblance to keep Mercury from seeing her move.

“I said ‘usually’!” Emerald grinned. “But you _are_ easy to steal from.” She held up her hand, revealing the peanut bar she’d swiped from the top of his grocery bag, the one he’d so ineptly tried to lift from the store.

Mercury gaped for a moment before schooling his expression back into that frown.

“It should be yours, anyway.” He hunched in his shoulders. “Since I ruined your job.”

He was right, of course. Emerald would have gotten away scot-free if it wasn’t for his stupid mouth. But she didn’t like the way he’d scrunched himself into a ball, the way he’d stopped looking at her. It felt like he was trying to be gone even though he was sitting right there, and Emerald was tired of people trying to be gone.

Through the wrapper, Emerald snapped the bar in half.

“Since you un-ruined the job,” she said, peeling the wrapper away, “maybe we could split it.” She drew out one half for herself and held the other out to Mercury.

Mercury stared at the chocolate bar for a second, like he was waiting for Emerald to pull it back away from him. It was a stare Emerald had gotten used to using herself, when passersby tried to hand her a few lien. Then he snatched the bar out of her hand and shoved the entire thing into his face.

Emerald couldn’t help but laugh. “Congrats on your first Vale heist, ‘burb-dweller!”

They ate in silence for a minute, after that. Mercury had decent taste, Emerald decided. The bar was crunchier than she would have liked, but it helped to ease the hollow scraping in her stomach that haunted her night and day.

Emerald had gotten good at ignoring hunger, letting it fade into background noise, but now that she was thinking about it, she couldn’t stop eating after one measly half of a chocolate bar. She reached over her shoulder, freeing the sour straws she’d swiped from her pack and unwrapping them. She tore into two of them at once with her teeth, blinking hard as she relished the face-twisting sourness of them. It was probably a weird thing to like about candy, but Emerald loved how it never let you forget that you were eating it—how it was a food that it was impossible to take for granted.

“What _is_ that?” Mercury asked with a look of mingled disgust and fascination, and Emerald did what she did next solely on the grounds that it would be funny.

“Try it for yourself,” she said, and she tossed one of the straws his way.

Mercury caught the straw and held it up between his thumb and forefinger, squinting at it with open suspicion.

“But, like, what do they make it out of?” He shook the straw back and forth as if he expected it to answer.

Emerald glanced at the back of the label, and even her status as one of the quickest readers at the orphanage couldn’t help her decipher any of the words on it.

She shrugged. “A buncha stuff I can’t pronounce.” She grinned. “I dare you.”

“Hm.” Mercury raised an eyebrow. “Here goes, I guess.” He tilted his head back and tossed the whole straw down the hatch. Did he know how to take individual bites of things?

The second Mercury closed his mouth, he clamped a hand over it, his face screwing up in abject disgust. He batted at her arm with his free hand, trying to land a hit. Emerald was laughing too hard to care.

Back at the orphanage, the little clusters of kids that became friends always played jokes on each other, like how the Janus twins would switch clothes and trick their friends into calling them by the wrong names. The jokes they’d all played on Emerald weren’t as funny, like stealing her pajamas during shower hour or leaving spiders in her bedroll, but everyone had laughed at them all the same.

Emerald really hoped that what she’d just done was a name-switch joke and not a spider-in-the-bedroll joke. She stopped laughing as Mercury swallowed down the last of the straw.

"You okay?” she asked. It would be just like her to make a friend and then make him so angry he left forever.

“You,” Mercury said, jabbing a finger at her, “are a _bad person._ ”

Emerald bit her lip. She _was_ bad, they’d said so, and she pushed people too much, and now he was going to leave her.

“How do you eat those things with a straight face?” he went on, not looking angry so much as… impressed? “Do you block the sour with your aura? Is that a thing you can do? Are you a mutant?”

And now Emerald was smiling again as she shook her head, and everything was okay.

“Just a criminal mastermind,” she said.

“A _freakish_ mastermind,” Mercury corrected. His brow furrowed as he glanced back toward the ‘burbs. “Do you do a lot of jobs?”

Emerald shrugged. “They’re kind of the only way I can get food. So, yeah.”

Mercury looked askance at her, and she glanced away.

“Orphan,” she said, raising a hand. “Or I might as well be.” Whoever Emerald’s parents were, they hadn’t stuck around to get to know her.

“Oh,” said Mercury, stymied for a moment. “That sucks.”

Emerald nodded. “Yeah, it—it does. But, uh, what were you saying again?”

“Right! Yeah, well, if you have a lot of jobs, maybe sometimes you could use some muscle? Like, as backup?”

There was a hopeful little almost-smile on his face, and Emerald returned it.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I could use that. And I bet you could use some help learning your way around the city, since you’re new and all.”

“I think I could figure it out myself.” Mercury bristled a little. “But an expert’s opinion might be quicker.”

Emerald beamed. She got to be an _expert._

“My dad’s gonna send me out for groceries on Saturday afternoons,” Mercury said, his mouth twisting as he looked back at the suburbs. “What’s a good, uh, rendezvous point?”

Well, _that_ was a word Emerald would need to look up. She took her best guess as to what it meant.

Emerald looked out over the city that stretched out before them, washed gold in the late afternoon sunlight. She sought out the old downtown bank with its big marble columns and pointed at it.

“How about we meet up there?” she asked. “There’s decent foot traffic for cover, and the roofs in the neighborhood are pretty easy to clear. We can get pretty much anywhere downtown from there.”

Mercury smiled. “Sounds good, Roof Queen.”

“Nice,” she said. “You think you can remember how to get there?”

Mercury nodded, frowning at the bank. “An a—a Huntsman never needs to be reminded of his target during a job.”

A Huntsman’s kid. That explained a lot. The weirdly high-level fighting skills, the unlocked aura, the fact that he and his dad had survived outside the kingdoms.

“That’s really cool!” she said. “No wonder it was so easy for you to take that guy down!”

“Yeah, uh.” Mercury was glancing back and forth now, like he was cornered.

Had she done something wrong?

“My dad’s probably wondering why I’ve been gone so long,” he said, getting to his feet and wrapping the handles of his grocery bag back around his forearm. “I should get back.”

“Right,” said Emerald, a pang of jealousy in her chest. Mercury had to go back to the ‘burbs, to a roof over his head and food on the table and a Huntsman dad who worried when he was gone too long. All she had to go back to was a sleeping bag wedged behind a dumpster.

“There’s a fire ladder on that side of the roof.” Emerald pointed to her left. “If you need a way down. My place is back that way.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, away from the ‘burbs.

Mercury started walking away, and the loneliness was already closing back in around Emerald like a vice.

“See you next week?” she called out, and she hated the desperation that had crept into her voice.

“See you next week,” said Mercury, and he sounded _certain,_ and the loneliness loosened its hold just a bit. “Bye, Emerald.” He waved as he took his first step onto the ladder.

“Bye, Wolfboy!” Emerald hollered back as the scruffy crown of Mercury’s head vanished over the side of the wall.

A drawn-out _Awooooo!_ sounded from the fire ladder.

Maybe today was Emerald’s day after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! This is my first-ever fic, and I'm really excited about it, so feedback, comments, kudos, etc. are, like, treasured. I'm planning to post chapters on Thursdays and have a pretty good buffer built up, so that should stay consistent (I hope). I've got big plans for these tiny murder kids, and I hope you guys enjoy!


	2. Danger on the Home Front

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which it becomes clear that both Emerald and Mercury really, really need a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is with a heavy heart that I inform you guys that Marcus Black is going to appear in this chapter and that he is going to be, well, Marcus Black, which means that the more unpleasant tags attached to this work are going to become relevant during the first Mercury POV section of this chapter. I've tried to spread his appearances out as much as I can so that this fic isn't constantly upsetting, and I'm gonna put individual content warnings in the chapters where he does appear just so you guys know the deal. So, uh, happy reading?

Emerald lived more of her life on rooftops than she did on the ground, and from the rooftops, she saw a lot.

In the year and a half she’d spent on the streets, she’d seen, from above, more muggings than she could count on one hand, a couple turf skirmishes, and, once, a group of Xiong thugs prying a guy’s mouth open while another of their number stood by with pliers.

She hadn’t stuck around to see what happened next.

She’d seen, also, that there were other kids like her, who made their lives on the streets, and without a Semblance like hers, they seemed to have a pretty rough time of it. Oh, sure, there were a couple that got by okay—the carrot-headed fox Faunus boy who could turn the things he touched invisible, the lavender-eyed girl with ram horns who carried a wicked pair of knives—but most didn’t last long.

Emerald had never stopped to talk to any of them.

At the orphanage, she’d had enough of stretching her hand out only to have it slapped away. These were kids who’d chosen to make it on their own, just like her. They wouldn’t want to be friends.

Still, on her route home at dusk, she would stop on the roof over each of their nests, checking to make sure they were still there. If they were holding on, Emerald could too.

As she hopped from roof to roof today, though, something was wrong. Half the weaker kids, the ones who had no Semblance or aura, were gone. Their nests were still there, rumpled sleeping bags and threadbare stuffed animals left undisturbed. The kids hadn’t moved out of their homes.

They’d vanished.

One of the weaker kids vanishing, on its own, wasn’t scary to Emerald, but half a dozen of them at once?

On a hunch, she stopped by over Carrothead’s nest, a woodshed out behind a garden center, one of the most coveted spots in town. Usually, by this time of night, he’d be sorting all his stolen food into neat little piles and wrapping each pile in a rubber band.

The woodshed was empty, the food spilled carelessly across the floor.

The sight frightened Emerald so much that she couldn’t even bring herself to drop down from the roof and scavenge what he’d left behind.

She scrambled back to her own place, a nook beside a dumpster that was covered by a low awning. Her nose had grown numb to the smell by now. She’d strung together a series of tin cans and hung them from the awning, screening her nest from view and ensuring that anyone who tried to grab her in the night would make a godsawful racket that would wake her up.

She never slept without her pick clenched in her hand.

Emerald slipped through the tin-can curtain and hunkered down on the bedroll she’d taken with her from the orphanage. It was getting pretty threadbare in places, but she wasn’t sure how she could lift anything that big from a store without taxing her Semblance too much. Other than the bedroll, she left nothing at her nest. Things on the ground could change when you weren’t looking. The only permanent things were the ones you kept with you.

Emerald shrugged off her pack and, making sure her pick was never outside of arm’s reach, sat back against the cement wall. From the buttoned compartment on the front, she lifted the three cloth-wrapped items that were her most prized possessions.

All of them had been lifted from the orphanage. The first was a book of fairy tales, worn around the edges, with the Tale of the Princess and the Peasant dog-eared. For now, Emerald didn’t need it, but she set it aside with care. She picked up the little penlight that clipped behind her ear, the first theft she’d ever made using her Semblance. It had belonged to the security guard who worked night shifts at the orphanage. She’d slipped it off of his ear on her way out, while he was micro-napping over a crime novel.

Emerald clicked on the light and let it shine onto her third treasure: a standard-issue dictionary, a tool that kept her from ever being in the dark for too long.

_Rahn-day-voo._ What would a word pronounced that way look like written out? Mercury had stumbled a little before he said it, which meant it was probably a weird word.

While her eyes skimmed fruitlessly over the “ra-” words, her mind turned on the empty nests lying throughout downtown. When Mercury had offered to be her muscle, she’d only accepted it as a flimsy pretense that would let her spend more time with the only person she’d ever met who’d actually stretched a hand out to _her._ But now, with kids going missing, having muscle—and muscle who might actually care about her—seemed like a pretty good idea.

Emerald shook her head, making the “ras-” words blur in front of her eyes. Mercury could still turn out to be a jerk. He was a ‘burb-dweller she barely knew. Him stealing that candy bar was just him trying on her life for fun. He wouldn’t want to visit her tin-can dumpster-shack, and she’d be embarrassed for him to see it at all. He probably wouldn’t even show up for the _rahn-day-voo._

_Rendezvous!_ The name appeared before her, and she grinned.

“ **n.** A meeting at a prearranged time and place”

A flicker of pride stirred in Emerald. She’d guessed right on her first try. She was smart. She was smart, and she’d kept Mercury from squashing himself like a bug, and if that dumb wolfboy didn’t keep his rendezvous with her, well, that was his loss.

But here, in the gathering dark, the idea of having a friend who could knock someone out in three kicks was comforting.

The idea of having a friend at all was comforting.

* * *

It was sunset by the time Mercury finished his run back to the suburbs, the grocery bag a cold weight swinging from his forearm. He was barely winded—that was good. He looked like he’d been putting in work but not like he was too weak to handle the work. It was a safe enough balance.

Their new house, like their old one, was small and blocky, but the resemblance screeched to a halt there. It was all plastic siding and newly laid bricks and a chimney that clearly hadn’t vented smoke once in its life. The houses around it stood empty for a full block, a deal worked out by Dad’s creepy new employers to keep anybody from spying on him.

In the claustrophobic week they’d spent being shuffled from safehouse to safehouse, trying to find a new hub for Dad’s line of work, Mercury had seen something that he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to.

In the moonless hours of the early morning, while Mercury was failing to sleep because of the bruises on his back and while Dad was putting a serious dent in his liquor rations, _something_ had floated into the room.

The something was smooth and round, and it had let out a dark glow. Trailing below and behind it from red, fleshy strands were way, way too many teeth, all of them pointed like arrowheads. Just the sight of thing had filled Mercury with—not fear. Fear was Not Allowed. It had filled him with Wanting to Curl Up Somewhere Dark Where No One Would Find Him.

“Marcus Black?” The Something had said, in the voice of a guy with a snooty Atlesian accent, and then Dad had followed the Something out of the room.

The next day, they had a new placement in Vale. And they had a new box among their luggage, one that Mercury wasn’t allowed to touch.

Mercury hovered in front of the door. He was late. He was late, and the Something was definitely in the house somewhere.

No. No hovering. No looking like he was scared. He wasn’t scared.

He raised his hand and knocked. Dad hadn’t given him a key. Before the door could open, he raised his aura. It wouldn’t pay for him to be unprepared if Dad decided to come out swinging.

The door swung inwards, and Mercury raised his chin. Strong. Not scared.

Dad stood silhouetted in the doorway, his shadow leaving Mercury in darkness.

“You’re back,” he said.

“Yes sir,” said Mercury.

Dad stepped aside from the door, leaving a narrow space for Mercury to pass through with the groceries, and Mercury did his best not to hurry through the passage, not to move like he knew how easy it would be for Dad to take him down from this angle.

But he made it through the door, and Dad didn’t move, so Mercury kept walking past the sofa and into the dining room, where he set the grocery bag down on the table. Next to it, he placed the change and the receipt he’d yanked out of the register just before he’d run after Emerald.

How high a price was Dad going to make him pay for running after her?

“You put these away after I check them,” said Dad, sitting down in front of the bag, still weirdly calm. Mercury took one step back, then two.

“Of course,” Mercury said. “You already ate?”

_Stupid._ That was a dangerous question. It would remind Dad that he’d been out so late that normal dinner time had come and gone. But all he’d had since lunch at noon was half that stolen peanut bar and one of those gross sour string things Emerald had given him. Mercury wished he didn’t get so stupid when he was hungry.

“I did.” And now Dad’s voice had some of its usual edge. He didn’t look up, though, just kept pulling items out of the bag and matching them to the receipt. “Rations in the fridge.”

Seizing the opportunity, Mercury backed into the kitchen and made his way to the fridge, trying to open it without making any noise. Without really looking, he pulled out a carton of noodles and started wolfing it down while standing up. Dad would get done with the groceries any second, and then he’d be able to actually pay attention to Mercury and how he’d failed. Best to get as much food down as he could before that happened.

“Soy milk, huh?” said Dad, and Mercury tensed. He’d known that that would come back to bite him. Stupid city slickers and their stupid unreadable labels.

“I, uh. Yes.” Mercury set the rest of the noodles down on the counter. If he spilled them, he’d get in more trouble.

“Stuff tastes like piss,” Dad said, his shoulders tightening. But he didn’t turn around, and after a moment, he seemed to relax, his head lowering over the list again. As quietly as he could, Mercury let out the breath he’d been holding.

Then Dad whipped around, leveled his weapon, and fired two rounds into Mercury’s chest.

Mercury’s aura tanked the shots and then shattered. He fell backward, bracing himself on the kitchen island as Dad rushed toward him, and this was _bad._ Dad only shot through his aura when they weren’t training, when Mercury had messed up badly enough that Dad didn’t want to go to the trouble of fighting, that he wanted to skip straight to the part that hurt.

This was _bad._

That was all Mercury really had time to think before Dad had twisted his right arm behind his back and pinned him against the fridge. Mercury didn’t move. He liked his arm too much to risk it, and after what Dad had done to his hands—

“Unless I’m forgetting,” Dad said, still with that too-calm voice, “I asked you to get to the store and back as quickly as you could.” He pressed upward on Mercury’s twisted arm just enough to send a jolt of pain running up it. “Am I forgetting?”

“No,” Mercury gritted out.

“Did I ask you to waste your time for _four hours_ before coming back?” Another jolt.

“No.”

“So the question is—” and this jolt sent white spots over his vision—“is my son incompetent or disobedient? Which is it? What were you doing with all that time you stole from me?” And now Dad was forcing his arm higher, and Mercury was _not_ going to scream, he liked his arm too much to scream, he didn’t want to train one-handed for the next week.

“What were you doing?” The calm was gone, Dad was shouting now, and Mercury’s mind was running in panicked circles because his arm was going to break, and before he could think it through, he was shouting, too, into the cold metal of the fridge.

“I was making a contact!”

The pressure let up.

“A contact?” Dad prompted.

Mercury nodded as well as he could with his face smashed up against the fridge, his words all tumbling out in a frantic exhale. “A pickpocket. Knows the city. Thought she might be useful. Took me a while to get her to trust me.”

There was a sinking feeling in his chest. The idea of Emerald as a contact and not as just someone who’d met him and liked him stung for some reason. It made her part of the world that belonged to Dad.

“And did you learn anything of use from this contact?” The pressure was back now, bones grating against each other, and Mercury knew that this was the final hurdle, the most important. He scoured his mind for anything Dad could use, anything that could justify him running after Emerald.

The cops had been on him and Emerald seconds after the cashier had called for help, but they hadn’t bothered to search for them.

“The cops in the nearest district have a really fast response time,” said Mercury. “Less than a minute, even without a scroll call. But they’re bad at patrolling the rooftops.”

“Hmph.” Dad let go of his arm and turned him around, but he kept a grip on the collar of Mercury’s jacket, a warning that this could go south just as quickly as it had started to head back north.

Why did nobody ever say that things went north? These were exactly the kinds of stupid questions that were going to get him killed someday.

“This contact of yours.” Dad’s eyes were almost as white as his hair, and Mercury did his best not to squirm at having them trained so closely on him. “What does she look like?”

And in the second before Mercury opened his mouth, the image of Fenri sitting there, tail thumping the ground as Dad handed him the revolver, charged through his mind.

“Red hair,” he said. “Green eyes. My age. Scrawny.”

He’d lied to Dad. He’d _lied_ to _Dad._ He forced himself to hold eye contact, not to cringe away.

“Hmph.” Dad’s brow furrowed. “Sounds like Torchwick’s started a brood.” For a moment, he looked thoughtful. “If you need to know a city, ask the rats. Keep your rat, Mercury. And tell me everything useful you learn from her.” At that, Dad shoved him back into the fridge a final time before letting him go. “Just make sure you remember that she’s nothing more than that. Understood?”

“Understood,” said Mercury, straightening up.

“Now, clean this up.” Dad waved at the groceries and reached around him to open the fridge and pull out a bottle. “I’m turning in.”

“Yes sir.”

Mercury stayed right where he was, perfectly still, until Dad’s footsteps had faded down the hallway, until he heard Dad’s bedroom door close and the lock turn.

He waited for five more seconds before he let himself slump to the floor and shake.

* * *

Three nights after she met Mercury, Emerald woke to the sound of someone screaming.

It was a girl’s voice, high and shrill. If Emerald screamed, she wouldn’t sound very different.

The most sensible option would probably be to run from the sound until her legs gave out, but she couldn’t help but think of all the empty hideouts she’d seen in the past few days. Someone was taking the street kids, and whoever it was, there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t go for Emerald next.

She needed to know what she was up against. She slung her pack over her back, took her weapon in hand, and grappled up onto the nearest rooftop, then sprinted toward the sound. There was no more screaming now, but Emerald was pretty sure the sound had come from a few blocks to the west. She flitted over rooftops, quick and quiet, and as she drew closer, she heard a grown man’s cry of pain and a woman’s laughter.

She recognized this territory now. She was only a roof over from the alley where the knife-wielding girl with the lavender eyes made her nest, a beehive structure of abandoned shipping crates.

When Emerald reached the rooftop that overlooked Lavender’s alley, she dropped onto her belly and crawled to the edge of the roof, peering over the side.

A burly guy with pale skin and a flabby face was grappling with Lavender and had just succeeded in catching her by the wrists. A gun that Emerald assumed belonged to the man lay abandoned on the ground. There was a long slice up his forearm that shone black in the moonlight and blood staining Lavender’s knives. The guy squeezed, and Lavender’s blades dropped from her hands. She spat in his face and rammed her horns into his gut.

_Nice one, Lavender._

“Piper!” he called. “A little help putting this one down?”

“Man, she _got_ you!” A woman stood a few feet away, holding what looked like a flute. She must have been some kind of bird Faunus, Emerald guessed, because instead of hair, she had a spiky shock of teal feathers glinting atop her head. She was laughing so hard that she was doubled over, an arm braced across her middle “‘Ooh, look at me! I let my parents name me Pie and I get stabbed by tiny children!’”

“It’s not funny, Piper, just put her down!”

Piper heaved a sigh and raised the flute to her lips. “Fine.”

In the instant before she could begin to play, Emerald clamped her hands over her ears, and that barely prepared her for what followed.

The sound that poured out of the flute, even muffled by her hands, was the most beautiful she’d ever heard. It made Emerald believe, somehow, that she had a mother, that her mother had kind eyes and was reaching down to tilt her chin up toward the morning light. That she had a house with a kitchen where someone was cooking waffles, and that if she took her mother’s hand and followed her, they would spend the morning together, that her mother would read her favorite fairy tale aloud to her and run soft fingers through her hair, smoothing out the knots.

Emerald clenched her teeth so hard they ached and ground the heels of her hands against her ears. The sound was lying, it was _lying._ Nobody loved her. Nobody cared if her hair was a mess, or whether or not she ate breakfast, or what fairy tales she liked. That was the truth, and she clung to it, to that lifeline made of razor wire.

In the alley below, Lavender stopped struggling the instant the music began, her hands falling to her sides and a dreamy expression crossing her face. Pie released her arms, and she strolled toward Piper with a smile.

_Buzz! Buzz!_

“Fuck!” Piper shouted, the flute falling from her lips as she fumbled for the scroll in her pocket. Pie clubbed Lavender over the head while she was still coming out of the trance and hefted her into his arms.

It wasn’t until then that Emerald realized that there were tears running down her face.

She bit her lip to stay silent as Piper cursed down the line and then trailed off into a series of “Yeah”s.

“New mark?” Pie asked when Piper hung up.

She nodded. “New mark. Should pay a lot better than these little mine rats, too.”

At Pie’s raised eyebrow, she went on. “An illusionist. Messed up a sales clerk pretty good three days ago, gave his head a spin, too. The cops just stopped sniffing after it.”

A chill ran up Emerald’s spine, and she shrank against the roof.

“A big haul, easy tracking.” Pie grinned. “Let’s get this one back to the boss and get to work.”

Emerald waited for the criminals to round the corner with Lavender before she wiped the tears from her eyes and took off at a blind sprint. If those freaks were coming for her next, she wasn’t going to make it easy for them. If they took her, she would vanish without a ripple. No mom would sit up late waiting for her to come home.

The only mark she would leave on the world would be the couple minutes of confusion and disappointment that Mercury would feel when she didn’t show up for their rendezvous.

When Emerald got back to her lair, she grabbed her sleeping bag, rolled it up, and strapped it to the top of her pack. The tin cans clanked a mournful farewell, and then she was running again, with no destination in mind, running and running until her ribs ached and her breath came in gasps. She ran until the sun was creeping over the horizon and she was miles away from the dumpster that was the closest thing she’d ever had to a home.

Four days. If she could keep the child-snatchers off her trail for four days, she could call in her muscle.

~~She could call in the one person who might miss her when she was gone.~~

* * *

If there was one thing Mercury genuinely liked about the new house, it was his bedroom door. The old house hadn’t had one, just an empty frame. This one even had a lock he could turn if he wanted, but he didn’t dare use it. Dad would think he was hiding something.

Still, he had a door that closed, even if Dad did like snapping it open at unexpected moments to make sure Mercury’s reflexes stayed sharp. For a little while, though, he could have the sealed space between those four walls all to himself. Right now, he was using that privacy to recite the grocery list back to himself in a whisper while he tugged on his gloves.

The scars underneath them were healing well, but they were deep enough that the grooves of them would probably be there forever. At least he could bend all his fingers again, make a fist and punch. Dad had been angry with him that day, said he’d been relying on his hands too much. Mercury was trying to work punches back into his sparring now. He liked his new kick-based style enough that he really didn’t want Dad to decide he was getting too dependent on his legs.

He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. “Onions. Jerky. Some normal godsdamn milk.” He thunked his head back against the plaster as he whispered that last one.

At least he got to get out of the house for a while. That was a weak thought, and he knew it. It was weak for an assassin not to want to train, but he had a contact to meet, and he thought there was a decent chance they might be able to swipe some more candy together. It wasn’t weak to look forward to theft, was it?

“Mercury.” The door slammed against the wall, and Mercury’s eyes flew open. He jumped to his feet. Dad was standing in the doorway, his arms crossed. “Were you planning to spend all day lazing in your room?”

“No sir,” Mercury said quickly, holding up his hands. “I was just getting my gloves.”

Dad nodded, though Mercury couldn’t ignore that gleam of suspicion in his eyes. “Just make sure you don’t take them off. Your jacket stays on, too. Understood?”

Mercury nodded. “Understood.” If the weak-stomached grown-ups of Vale saw the bruises on Mercury’s arms or the mantle of cigar burns that aura training had printed onto his left shoulder, it’d make trouble for Dad, and trouble for Dad meant even more trouble for Mercury.

Dad followed him to the front door like a shadow and then slammed it behind him, and the relief Mercury felt when he stepped out into the sunlight was shameful. He sprinted toward downtown at top speed, liking the way it made his heart beat fast with something other than not-allowed nerves. He ran because it was efficient, he told himself, not because he was excited to see the street-rat contact who probably wouldn’t even show—not because he wanted to spend as much time as possible hopping rooftops with her before he had to go home and cook dinner. Apparently he wasn’t just The Guy Who Brought Provisions now, but also the guy who cooked them.

Twenty minutes later, Mercury was regretting the fact that he had to keep wearing the stupid jacket, and the bank Emerald had pointed out a week ago loomed in front of him, ridged columns towering up story after story, trying and failing to be redwoods.

In the herd of people, there was no sign of Emerald.

His fingers clenched around the handles of his shopping bag. He shouldn’t have been feeling this sinking disappointment in his chest. She was just a street rat, like Dad said. What else was he supposed to expect?

He waited for a few minutes and checked behind the columns, but that lying little pickpocket was nowhere to be seen.

He scowled, shoving his hands into his pockets, and slouched off in search of a store where he wouldn’t be connected to a robbery. He stayed close to the brick wall of the bank, avoiding the crush of people milling around in the plaza.

So, he was close enough to the alley beside the bank that someone was able to lunge out, clamp a hand over his mouth, and drag him into the shadows.

Mercury bit at the hand and brought his right foot back and down, stomping on his assailant’s toes so they flinched back. He spun and raised his fist only to freeze when he saw who had grabbed him.

Emerald looked terrible. There were bruise-like circles under her bloodred eyes, and she was bowed under the weight of her pack, which now had a grubby-looking sleeping bag strapped to it.

Mercury lowered his fist. “If you keep trying to gag me, I’ll really punch you one of these days.” Dad would want him to punch her on purpose, but he was pretty sure that he would only ever punch her on accident, because he was already asking a stupid question. “Are you okay?”

Why did it matter that she was okay?

Emerald frowned. “Run that by me again?” She reached up and pulled a wad of cotton out of one ear, then the other.

Mercury wrinkled his nose. “Oh, gross! What are those _for?_ Do you have some kind of street-ear disease?”

“No, Mercury.” Emerald rolled her eyes. “I do not have ‘street-ear disease.’”

Okay, the fact that an eyeroll was the worst thing that happened to him when he put his foot that far in his mouth made Mercury happier than he had any right to be. Dad would deck him for saying something that stupid, but here, if there wasn’t any real penalty here for being obnoxious… he wondered how far Emerald would let him run with this.

“I dunno.” He propped a hand on his chin and leaned in, squinting at her as he fought back a smile. “You look pretty icky to me.”

“Ugh!” Emerald stamped her foot on the ground, her sandal making a pitiful slapping noise that was way less imposing than she probably hoped it would be. “What I _have_ is a couple of goons chasing me down every time I use my Semblance!”

“Okay, but that does _not_ explain your creepy cotton gobs.”

“I’ll explain them when you take me somewhere I can get some food,” she said testily.

Mercury held up his hands. “You’re the one who knows where all the food in town is. That’s not in my pay grade.”

Emerald gritted her teeth. “I’m not paying you.”

“Which is all the more reason for me not to—”

“I haven’t eaten in two days, asshole!” she snapped. Her fists were clenched at her sides, and he flinched back because of course there was a penalty, there always was. “This isn’t funny!” Then, just like that, she deflated, her pack dwarfing her. She wasn’t going to hit him. She was littler than him, and if these goons were keeping her from using her Semblance… she could be gone, really gone in no time, and Mercury would be alone with Dad again. A cold, Not Allowed feeling snaked up his spine at the thought of that.

He lowered his head. “Right. It’s not.” When he raised it again, he’d pasted a smile back on. “Good thing you hired some muscle, right?”

Emerald smiled, a smile that looked like it could shatter into tears at any second, and oh gods, if she cried it really would be above his pay grade.

“Right,” she said, swallowing. “I’m sorry I called you an A-double-snake-hole.”

Mercury let out a laugh and shrugged. “Eh, I feel like you’re gonna have good reason to call me a lot of things.”

Emerald’s stomach growled like she had a Beowulf hidden in her abdomen.

_“Food,”_ she said.

“Whatever you say, boss.” Mercury turned down the alley. “Just show me the way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tune in next week for when the kids commit vigilantism! As always, I'm super excited to chat with you guys down in the comments. Cheers!


	3. Paying the Piper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the murder children pick a fight.

To Emerald, the produce section of the LargeMart supercenter was a paradise. A rainbow of fruits stretched out in front of her, every one of them gleaming like jewels. Her stomach growled, and she braced a hand over it.

“You sure there’s nothing alive in there?” Mercury asked, bagging up a couple of onions.

“You got me,” said Emerald. “It’s a parasite from outer space that’s gonna burst out of my stomach and eat your dumb face unless you feed it soon.”

“Well, before your space parasite can mess up my _very handsome_ face, maybe you should grab one of those apples.”

Emerald waited for the old lady who’d been watching them from the freezer cases to turn and then grabbed two, slipping them into her pack before the lady could turn back around with her bags of frozen peas. The urge to just eat what she stole right there in the produce aisle was almost overpowering. Her knees had gone weak, and her head pounded like she’d used her Semblance on at least three people.

Every time she’d tried to stop and use her Semblance to nab a bite to eat, those kidnapping creeps had appeared out of nowhere, like her Semblance was a homing beacon. They were starving her out.

But now Mercury was here, and if his cart full of legitimate purchases made the cashiers turn a blind eye to her backpack full of stolen goods, then she would call him her friend no matter how many stupid jokes he made.

Maybe calling him her friend would bug him. She should try it out some time.

“Soooo, I took you to food,” he said. “You wanna fill me in on the job?” Even Emerald, a fellow eight-year-old, could see how ridiculous it was for a kid whose chin barely cleared the handle of the shopping cart to ask another kid about “the job,” but she held back a laugh.

“A couple goons have been taking street kids from all over town for the past week, for work in the Dust mines, I think, and apparently people will pay extra-good money for me because of my Semblance.” She shuddered.

“And the weird ear cotton is because…?”

She told him about how Piper had entranced Lavender. “Her Semblance… I think she channels it with the flute, and it—” Emerald looked down at the tiled floor, hiding her face from Mercury’s expectant gaze—“it makes you feel like you’ll get the thing you want most in the world if you just follow her. Even if you know it’s impossible.”

“Plus, the flute’s probably also a gun.” She looked back up to see Mercury smiling nervously, like he was—gods, was he trying to cheer her up?

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” she said as they moved into the dairy section. There was nothing here for her to steal.

Mercury stopped the cart in front of the case for the milk. “And the guy? He’s armed?”

“Yeah, and I think he must have some kind of ability that lets him track Semblances.”

“And the girl still cut him?” Mercury was squinting into the glass front of the case.

“Yeah.”

Mercury didn’t move, his eyes scanning over the cartons in a seemingly random pattern. His brow furrowed, and his hands clenched into fists.

When Emerald poked him in the arm, he flinched away like she’d bitten him.

“Sorry!” She recoiled. “You were just making a weird face.” Mercury stayed where he was, glancing between her and the freezer case like they both had him at gunpoint. “Is something wrong?”

Mercury let out an exasperated huff and crossed his arms. He nodded at the freezer case.

“As the, uh, city expert,” he said. “What milk is the normal milk?”

“Uh.” Emerald leaned in close to the case. “This one says whole milk. That’s normal, right?”

Mercury’s entire face had gone red, and he’d buried the lower half of it in the collar of his jacket, like a turtle.

“It doesn’t say soy or anything?” he mumbled.

Emerald shook her head and pulled the milk out of the case. “It doesn’t. Cross my heart.”

She had several questions now, about why Mercury had gotten that bent out of shape about dairy products and why he was so embarrassed to ask about them, but he still looked like he was trying to hide in that too-big jacket, and she didn’t want to upset him enough that he left her.

For now, she just filed away the possibility that her friend didn’t know how to read.

“So, uh, what else do you need?” Emerald asked as she set the milk down in the cart. Mercury looked up, his shoulders lowering a tick. “Eggs? Bread?”

“Yeah,” Mercury said, the red starting to fade from his face. “Both of those.” He took up the handles of the cart and started pushing again. They’d made it all the way through the whole foods aisle, where Emerald had swiped half a dozen protein bars, by the time he spoke again.

“So, lemme get this straight—these armed grown-ups ambushed a sleeping eight-year-old, didn’t use the song Semblance right off the bat, and one of them got injured even though he had a gun?”

“Pretty much,” said Emerald.

He barked out a laugh. “Em, this is great.”

Emerald found herself smiling. They were already at the nickname level of friendship, and they’d only hung out twice! It had always taken Rex Aurum and the Janus twins months before they started nicknaming their friends.

“How’s it great?” she asked.

“They’re incompetents!” He waved his hands excitedly and hopped in place once. Emerald made a mental note to look up “incompetent” the next time she was alone with her dictionary. “They’re so, _so_ bad at their jobs. _I_ could have planned a better kidnapping than that, and Dad thinks _I’m_ too much of a hazard to take on missions!” A not entirely pleasant smile crossed his face. “This is gonna be fun.”

Their cashier was a smiling woman with grey-streaked hair whose nametag identified her as Cypress. She looked old enough that she might be starting to have grandkids, or, to Emerald’s mind, Unspeakably Ancient.

“Oh my!” said Cypress, her green eyes gleaming behind cat’s-eye glasses. “It’s not often you see little kids making runs like this.” She leaned across the counter and smiled. “You two must be very responsible.”

“We are.” Mercury cut his eyes at her. “What of it?”

Cypress looked pretty understandably taken aback at an eight-year-old radiating that much anger, and Emerald set a hand on his arm, shot him a _play-it-cool_ glance. If he messed up the only chance at food that had come Emerald’s way in the past two days, they would _have words._

She beamed up at Cypress while Mercury started slamming items down on the conveyor belt. “Sorry! My friend’s from outside the kingdoms.” She hoped that would seem like enough of an explanation.

“Oh!” Cypress grinned, delighted. “I grew up outside the kingdoms too, young man! In Vacuo. Living out there sure can teach a body to be stubborn and proud, can’t it?”

Mercury glanced up, bit his lip, and said nothing.

Cypress turned her smile back to Emerald and whispered, “Case in point.”

By the time they’d left the LargeMart, Emerald’s pack bulging with stolen goods and Mercury’s bag of groceries looped around his forearm, Mercury looked equal parts seething and bewildered.

“Where does that stupid hag get off acting like she knows me?” he fumed.

Emerald shrugged. “People act that way with kids a lot around here. I think she was trying to be nice.” She’d… kind of liked Cypress. She seemed friendly. And too annoying about it for it to be the kind of fake-nice act that the grown-ups at the orphanage usually put on.

“I don’t need people to be nice to me,” Mercury grumbled.

“You know, she kind of was right on the money with ‘stubborn and proud,’” Emerald prodded. Mercury went red in the face again, and she changed tacks. “And besides, even if you don’t need her to be nice to you, being nice to people makes it _way_ easier to steal from them.”

“Hm. Well, when you put it _that_ way…”

They made their way to a nearby alley, and the second they had cover, Emerald yanked a stolen apple out of her pack and started eating, staining her chin and her fingers. Only after she’d eaten the apple and two whole granola bars did the outer-space-parasite in her stomach stop growling.

Mercury leaned back against a wall. “Feeling better?”

“Much,” Emerald wiped her mouth. “So, what’s our plan? I could use my Semblance to lure them out somewhere deserted. Then what?”

“Why deserted?” Mercury asked.

Emerald’s leg bounced up and down. “If we fight them around people, we’ll get a lot of attention. If the cops show up, they could—they could take me back to the orphanage, and I—I really want to not go back there.”

She hadn’t come this far just to get locked in another closet, just to have Mrs. Copperfield screech at her and call her a monster again and try to starve the mischief out of her.

Mercury crossed the alley and sat down on the crate beside her. He didn’t reach for Emerald or say anything. He just sat there, and they waited for her hands to stop shaking. When had they started shaking?

“So,” he said, when her hands were steady again. “Somewhere deserted. Show me a place, and we can make some plans. Okay?”

Emerald reached back and wrapped her hand around her pick. She was ready to make these creeps pay for trying to make her disappear.

“Okay.”

* * *

Emerald led Mercury to an old shipping yard that had, in its heyday, stored goods from Vale before they were sent along to Mountain Glenn.

No one had shipped anything through it in a long, long time.

The fall of Mountain Glenn was one of the only historical events that Dad had bothered to teach Mercury about. Huntsmen, trying to take more of the world back for humanity, to do the right thing, had brought about more deaths than even the greatest assassin in the world could hope to deal out in a lifetime. Mountain Glenn meant that people who tried to do what was right—who believed there was such a thing as right at all—were stupid, and more than that, they were dangerous.

Emerald nodded at the yawning mouth of a decrepit warehouse ahead of them.

“Good place for an ambush, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The warehouse echoed like a cave, sound reflecting off of the dingy brown of its metal walls. A rusted-down forklift stood abandoned in the back corner, and a few hillocks of stray crates lay scattered across the floor, along with bigger shipping containers fashioned out of thick, ridged metal. An old block-and-tackle series of pulleys and rope stretched up the wall and across the ceiling to its peak near the entrance, letting a rusty hook dangle in midair.

Looking up at the hook, Mercury smiled. _“Great_ place for an ambush.”

They spent the next fifteen minutes ironing out the plan, and Mercury couldn’t help but appreciate how downright nefarious some of Emerald’s contributions were. Even if he weren’t in the picture, these goons would have their work cut out for them going after her.

And yet, he thought as they both gritted their teeth and pulled on the block-and-tackle rope to heave one of the big metal containers into the air, he was _glad_ that he was in the picture, that if he fought hard enough, he could keep himself from losing his funny new contact.

“There,” he said, as he knotted the rope around a metal hoop jutting out of the floor. “All set.”

Emerald wrung her hands. “I guess it’s, uh, time to call them in.”

“Yeah,” said Mercury, bouncing on the balls of his feet and trying to push down the anxious crackling feeling in his chest. He’d never fought people outside of his training, and Dad said he was weak. Was he going to be good enough? “I guess it is.”

“Okay,” said Emerald. “So… my Semblance is the kind of thing that I have to use _on_ someone, and since you’re the only person around…”

“Right.” There was an unpleasant tightness in Mercury’s throat. “Sure. Whatever.” Not like he wasn’t used to having attacks tried out on him. “Get it over with.”

“I’ll try to make it nice, okay?” said Emerald. “It doesn’t hurt, I promise.”

Mercury’s jaw tightened. “It doesn’t matter, you don’t have to—”

An elm tree sprouted out of the concrete floor of the warehouse and spread its branches above his head. Curled up, content, at its roots was a shaggy, grey-eyed wolf.

And this didn’t hurt, at least, not in the usual way. It itched and stung in his chest the way a cut did when it was just starting to heal.

Emerald dropped her fingers from her temple, and the tree and the wolf vanished. “Was that okay? I tried to make it something you might… like.”

Mercury kept staring, dumbstruck, at the empty, stagnant air of the warehouse where the tree had stood a second before.

“Wow,” he said, and when he turned to back to her, he’d successfully loaded another joke. “No wonder you’re worth so much money.”

Emerald’s look of concern vanished, and she swatted at his arm. “Oh, screw you! Get hidden before Pie tracks us.”

Wait, what?

“Hold up, the guy’s name is _Pie?”_ Why had she not provided him with this ~~hilarious~~ _crucial_ intel?

“That’s what the piper called him.” Emerald shrugged.

Mercury chuckled. “This really is going to be a mercy kill.”

Emerald froze, looking askance at him. “You’re joking, right?”

“Well yeah, about the guy’s stupid name.”

“About _killing him._ We don’t kill people.”

Like she was qualified to make that kind of statement of policy!

Mercury glanced up at the thousand-pound shipping container hovering in the air beside them. “You coulda had me fooled.”

Emerald was still staring at him with that look of slack-jawed horror. “You’re a Huntsman’s kid! Isn’t your whole thing protecting people?”

Oh _gods,_ this was just what he needed—Emerald thinking he was some kind of hero, thinking Dad was some kind of hero.

“Like I can only do what my dad does!” he shouted.

“Is this fun for you?” Emerald matched his volume. “Huntsman’s kid pretending to be a crook? Does it make you feel tough? Well, I _am_ a crook, and it’s not fun! It’s scary and lonely, and if you’re being one for fun, you’re an idiot!” She was in his face now, red eyes blazing, but he wouldn’t give ground.

“I know it’s not fun!” Both of them had their hands clenched into fists now. He bit his lip before he could say too much, before he could say that he was a crook, too, and that every day he paid in bruises for the hope that Dad could make him a better one. Before he could say that fun was something that only belonged to Fenri and now to Emerald and that he wanted to end anybody who might take that from him.

These creeps had made Emerald look _small._

More quietly, he said, “They deserve it. They hurt you.”

Since when did he think about what people deserved? That was _definitely_ a way to get killed.

Emerald startled back in surprise. “Oh! That’s… nice? But weird. But nice? Anyway, the cops will definitely be a problem if they find bodies, so we should just leave them tied up and call in a tip. Whatever they deserve, we don’t deserve the Vale PD on our tails.”

Okay, that was a pretty good point.

There was a laugh outside the warehouse.

Mercury swore. “Fine! Just get in place!”

“Take these!” Emerald shoved a pair of cotton balls into his hand and flitted away.

As Emerald took cover behind a shipping container, right beside the bar where they’d tied off the block-and-tackle, Mercury scrambled up to the top of the highest pile of shipping crates and, from there, leapt up into the rafters.

He crouched on a metal beam and watched Piper and Pie’s shadows stretch out into the long rectangle of sunlight that the front door admitted. He pressed one of the cotton balls into his left ear, but he left the other free. He wanted to get a sense of their attitudes, and that would be easiest if he could hear what they were saying.

The better you knew your opponent, the easier it was to take them down.

“C’mon kiddo,” Pie—seriously, _Pie,_ what parent allowed that?—called out, “we saw you scurrying. This’ll be easier if you come on out.”

Both of them walked slowly, casually. They were arrogant. Months of hunting down scared kids with no resistance had made them weak, and anger sparked in Mercury’s chest. Dad always talked about how stupid “good” people were, but here, standing smack dab under the giant metal shipping container that they somehow hadn’t noticed, were two pieces of evidence that said that evil could make people stupid, too.

Piper pulled out her scroll and used it as a flashlight, sweeping the beam across the floor of the warehouse and just missing Emerald’s hiding place.

“No use running, little sneak. There’s nowhere left to go.” The dim glow of the flashlight made the crooked smile on her face truly creepy. “And you’re dealing with the best.”

Mercury scoffed. “No, she’s not.”  
  
The beam of the flashlight flicked upward and caught him as he stuffed the second piece of cotton into his free ear. Perfect.

He flashed a threatening smile of his own, one that he chose to believe put Piper’s to shame. “But you are.”

While the kidnappers’ eyes were trained on him and Pie was unholstering his gun, Emerald slipped out a hand, and, with a single tug on the knot, freed the rope holding up the shipping container and let gravity do its work.

The metal bulk whistled downward. Pie looked up and dropped his gun.

“Piper!” he shouted, and he raised his hands, catching the full weight of the shipping container and giving Piper time to roll out of the way. His aura flickered, but held.

If he hadn’t had any, it would have squashed him like a bug.

Mercury sprang off of the rafter and rocketed down at Piper. The second she got to her feet, the steel toes of his boots crashed into the base of her throat. Even with her aura raised, she stumbled back a couple steps, and Mercury rebounded off of her, flipping—a little sloppy—and landing in a crouch—even sloppier. Dad would have been able to sweep his legs out from under him and kick him in the chin as he fell with ease.

But this birdbrained goon wasn’t Dad.

Emerald darted in close to Pie as he was still struggling to hold the shipping container over his head and swept his gun off the floor. While Mercury dodged an overhand swing of Piper’s flute, Emerald ran out from under the shadow of the metal container and flung the gun out of the warehouse and out of play. She vanished into the shadows at the corners of the warehouse to wait for the right moment to strike.

Mercury delivered a kick to Piper’s kneecap and scrambled away, landing not far from Pie. Phase One of their attack strategy had gone to plan.

This was going to be even easier than he’d thought.

And no sooner had that thought cleared Mercury’s brain than Pie let out a cry and heaved the shipping container at him. It landed on its side an inch from his toes and slid forward with the force of a freight train, sending up sparks. It slammed into Mercury, sending him flying, and he hit the back wall of the warehouse with a bang before sliding to the floor.

“Nng.” The silver of his aura was flickering over his hands, running low.

That was _not_ part of the plan.

Before he could recover, Pie came vaulting over the shipping container and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. Mercury struggled, pummeling Pie’s midsection with his fists, but the guy’s hands were huge, and he knew from experience that there was no good way to land a kick when someone bigger than him had him in this kind of hold. He let out a strangled yell as Pie’s grip tightened, and another meaty hand started pawing at his head, seeking out the cotton in his ear and pulling it free and no no _no_ this was just like when he fought Dad.

“He’s all yours, Pipes,” Pie said, and he flung Mercury out into the center of the warehouse floor.

Mercury barely managed to catch himself on his forearm and bring himself into a log roll, only just keeping his aura from shattering. He brought himself to a halt at Piper’s feet.

“Think we can get a bonus?” she called back to Pie. Then she raised the flute to her lips, and—Mercury heard nothing. No sudden longing infected him or took away his mind. He grinned. He was too strong for her.

He kicked out, and Piper narrowly dodged out of the way, a frown forming on her face. She turned the flute ninety degrees and rested her hand on its newly revealed trigger. Because of course it was also a gun.

“I was just joking about that,” he grumbled as he rolled out of the way of the shot.

A shrill cry broke through the air, and he looked up to see Pie catching the pick at the end of Emerald’s hose a second before it could make contact with his face and yanking so that she fell, the ground hitting her chin hard, and understanding broke over Mercury like a wave.

He wasn’t too strong for Piper’s Semblance. Emerald used her own to keep Mercury from hearing it and given her location away to Pie in the process. And now Pie was dragging the hose out of Emerald’s hands and swinging his foot up into her ribs, and her concentration was probably shattered, and he was _hurting_ her, and the edges of Mercury’s vision blurred, and then—

The song was so gentle in his ear, in his mind. He’d never felt anything that soft before, and he turned toward the sound.

And the song turned into a mountain wind brushing against his cheek and Fenri nuzzled against his side. A ball flew past them, and Fenri was off in a flash of grey. He turned with her as she raced back the way the ball had come and saw Dad standing there, a patient smile on his face. A smile Mercury had never seen before.

When Fenri reached him and dropped the ball at his feet, Dad bent down and scratched her under the chin, grinning.

“C’mon,” he said to Mercury. “I don’t have any jobs for a while, so maybe the three of us can just relax for once.” He smiled as Fenri licked his face. “Isn’t that right, girl?”

Mercury took a cautious step forward. “No training?”

Dad shook his head. “Merc, we’re not gonna do that anymore. You’re strong now, and I trust you. Now, c’mere.” He opened his arms, and for once Mercury knew that there was no trick in store, no hidden test. He was safe, he was _safe,_ and Dad was proud of him.

_“Mercury!”_ A girl’s voice, screaming at the top of her lungs, somewhere far away. _“Mercuryyyyy! Agh!”_

“Don’t worry about that,” Dad said, but his voice was distorted under the screams. Would Dad really go soft this easily?

_“Merc don’t listen Merc don’tlistenMercdon’tlisten!!!”_

Fenri dissolved into mist, and the mountain breeze died into the sluggish heat of Vale summer. Dad was still standing in front of him in the dim, shriek-filled warehouse. Why was he holding a flute?

“I love you, Merc.”

He wanted Dad to go soft. He was weak, he was weak, and Dad would hurt him for it if he knew.

“I’d never hurt you.”

Mercury’s eyes stung. The scars on his palms flared, and the still-healing burns on his shoulder smarted. He looked up at the thing that wasn’t Dad, its outline blurred by tears that his real father would deck him for letting roll down his face. He swallowed, then set his jaw.

“Bullshit,” he said, and he drove his boot into not-Dad’s knee.

He threw all the aura he had left into the kick, and the illusion shattered with it. Piper stumbled backward, her hold on the flute loosening, and Mercury sprang up and snatched it out of her hands. He broke the damn thing over his knee and let the pieces clatter to the floor.

Emerald needed his help.

He whirled and dashed toward the back of the warehouse, where Pie had Emerald backed into a corner. He’d coiled her weapon over his back and was throwing punches at her that she could barely dodge in the small space, and by _gods_ Mercury was going to make him pay for putting that look of rage and terror in her eyes.

Almost as much as he was going to make Birdbrain pay for the tears drying on his face.

Mercury kicked off of a crate and launched himself at Pie, the steel toe of his boot landing a glancing blow on the crown of the big guy’s head. Pie rounded on Mercury with a snarl, and that was all the opportunity Emerald needed to spring into the air and slip her weapon back over his shoulder. She held the hose coiled at her side with one hand and kept the pick spinning through the air with the other, ready to strike at a second’s notice.

Pie glanced between them warily.

“You deal with him, I deal with her!” Emerald shouted, slipping under Pie’s guard and rushing to Mercury’s side.

“Got it!” Mercury rolled to the right as Pie’s fist slammed down at him. With his aura gone, all he had on his side was his own speed and Pie’s gods-given stupidity. He just needed to tire him out.

_And not get hit,_ he tacked on as a kick Pie aimed at his chin forced him to flip backward and retreat.

Emerald was doing well, at least. Piper was swinging the jagged ends of her broken flute at illusions while Emerald kept flinging out her pick and jerking it back in quickly, landing little strikes that steadily chipped away at Piper’s aura.

Hmmm. Now _there_ was an idea. If he could maneuver Pie into place so that Emerald could get Piper to hit him…

The idea upgraded itself to a plan, and Mercury kept retreating, dodging Pie’s punches and backing up so that they drew closer and closer to Emerald’s fight with Piper.

He glanced over his shoulder at Emerald, and the crafty look that crossed her face when she met his eyes told Mercury that she understood the plan.

Piper spun to face Pie, snarling at the vision of Emerald that she probably saw in his place. Mercury pivoted, twisting to get out from between them before the blows could land. Piper stabbed forward at Pie’s midsection with both halves of the flute, and just as Mercury had danced clear, Pie caught him by the wrist and yanked.

One half of the flute collided with Pie’s gut and shattered his aura. The other sliced a wide gash across Mercury’s arm. Before he could register pain, Mercury drew his foot back and slammed it into Pie’s gut right where the flute had struck it.

Pie cried out and let go of Mercury’s wrist, and Mercury finished him the same way he had the cashier, with a quick kick to the forehead. But Piper was already reeling back, blinking free of the illusion and raising the halves of the flute to stab down again, and turned this way Mercury couldn’t dodge, and—

_Clank!_

Turquoise aura flickered and shattered over Piper’s form as Emerald’s pick cracked against the back of her head. The pick’s iron handle struck the back of Piper’s neck now, and she went down like a ton of bricks.

Emerald stood in her place, breathing heavily, her weapon still raised.

Both kidnappers lay sprawled on the floor of the warehouse, out cold.

He and Emerald had won, but all Mercury wanted to do now was curl up on the floor and shiver. Winning wasn’t supposed to feel this way, he was sure of it. He wasn’t supposed to feel so cold.

“Hey.” Emerald’s voice broke him out of his thoughts. She looked as dazed and wary as he felt, and she spoke slowly, like stringing the words together took work. “Tie them up, and I’ll call the cops.”

While Mercury yanked the block-and-tackle’s rope free and started looping it around Pie and Piper, Emerald made her way over to Piper’s scroll, which lay abandoned on the floor, its flashlight setting still casting a weak glow on the ceiling.

Mercury pulled the rope tight—probably tighter than he needed to—and knotted it before padding over to Emerald.

She was holding the scroll in her hand, biting her lip and shivering as its screen cast blue light onto her face.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I know why I’m worth so much money.” She sounded faint. “The others… littler people can fit into tighter spaces. They’re better for mining Dust. But me…”

Mercury peered over her shoulder. And of course, he couldn’t read a word of whatever the stupid, glaring screen had written on it.

“Some bandit king in Vacuo decided the world was too boring,” she said. “He wanted to see dragons and walk in the stars. Like, that’s what his official request reads. And nobody can actually do those things. But they can get close if they have someone with a Semblance like mine locked up in a cage in their palace.” Her voice was getting smaller and smaller.

She wasn’t even looking at the scroll now, just staring past it at the floor. A crushing anger was building in Mercury’s chest. “I—I’ve never kept up an illusion for more than a couple minutes. Using my Semblance all day—my head’d just bust open, and what would they do to me once I—”

Mercury tugged the scroll out of her hand.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, and she blinked at him. “We got ‘em.” His eyes narrowed. “Nobody’s putting you in a cage.”

_Not on my watch._

Emerald’s smile was little and scared. It broadened a bit when she glanced past him to where Piper and Pie were tied up, unconscious. Mercury managed to find the button on the scroll for placing calls and handed it back to Emerald.

“You’re the city expert,” he said. “Get us some cops.”

“Never thought that'd be a sentence I’d agree to,” she muttered, tapping in a number and raising the scroll to her ear.

“Hello? Yes?” she said. “I’m calling in a tip. That’s a thing I can do, right? Great. There are two child traffickers tied up in a warehouse in the old Mountain Glenn shipping lot, and their scroll is full of intel that should let you bust the entire ring. Yes, I did just do your job for you. You’re welcome! Bye!” She hung up and let the scroll fall out of her hand.

“That should be enough info for them even if we are in the Dumb Cops District,” she said, turning to him. Her eyebrows shot up. “Merc, you’re bleeding!”

The cut barely stung over the rush of adrenaline that was making him dizzy, and he could tell it was the sort of wound that his aura could patch up in no time. His hoodie, though—there was blood seeping into it and staining, and he wouldn’t be able to hide it from Dad, and Dad would know he’d gotten in a fight he couldn’t win cleanly, and then he would be in _so much trouble,_ and—

“Mercury!” Emerald was reaching toward the wound, and he jerked his arm away. “We need to do something about it!”

He shook his head. “My aura doesn’t take long to come back.” Dad’s training had made sure of that. “It’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

“This seem like something I would joke about?”

It probably _was_ something he would joke about, but Emerald didn’t need to know that right now.

Emerald pressed her mouth into a line. “I guess not. Then… do you wanna watch them get arrested from a couple roofs over?”

“Em,” he said, finally letting himself breathe out. He’d kept his contact safe. He’d have someone to crack jokes with and tell him which milk was the right kind. That was a win. “I would _love_ that.”

* * *

Emerald scrambled up onto the rooftop, and just the feeling of the ground stretching out beneath her, everything on it visible and too far away to hurt her, put her at ease. When Pie had had her trapped in the corner of the warehouse, he’d loomed like a mountain, and the world had felt crushingly small. The sky spread out above her like an embrace. She wouldn’t have survived a day in the cage they’d built for her.

Mercury climbed up after her and handed her pick back to her. They lay next to each other on their stomachs at the top of the roof, peering over it so that they’d have a view of everyone going into or out of the warehouse where they’d had their fight. He’d rolled up the sleeve on his wounded arm and kept trying to wring the blood out of it.

“You know somewhere I can rinse this?” he asked.

“Not unless you wanna dunk it in a fountain,” she said and frowned. “Is your sleeve really more important than your arm?”

“My arm won’t get me in trouble with my dad,” he said. “My sleeve will, though.”

He reached up and wiped at his face where tear tracks clung to it. Emerald’s throat still ached from how loudly she’d screamed to drown out Piper’s song. Pie had punched her so hard her aura had flickered—it was the same light green as her hair, she knew now—but that hadn’t stopped her.

She remembered that awful tearing feeling in her chest when she’d dragged herself out of Piper’s illusion and back into sharp, ugly reality, and Mercury had taken the Semblance point-blank. It must have been worse for him.

He hid his face while he scrubbed it with his hands, making his pale skin turn an irritated red.

Emerald nudged him with her elbow, and he looked up sharply. “What?”

“You don’t have to do that to your face.” He tilted his head, confused. “When Piper used her Semblance on me… I cried, too. You don’t need to be embarrassed.”

Mercury scowled. “Yeah I do.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “You’re sure it really shows you the thing you want most? Maybe… maybe it’s just mind control, and—and you can’t help what you see.”

“I dunno,” Emerald said. “For me, it was definitely the thing I’ve always wanted.”

“A mansion made of sour straws?” Mercury asked, and she realized that every time he looked scared, a joke came out of his mouth. He was dodging, just like he had in the fight, only Emerald was a smarter opponent than Pie. He’d almost died helping her, but now he wouldn’t even let her be nice to him. And… she wanted him to know how much his help meant to her.

So, she wasn’t going to let him keep dodging. She plowed into the question head-first.

“A mom,” she said. “Someone who’d read me stories and cook me breakfast and stuff.” She hunched her shoulders, a little scared now that she’d said it. How could she just hand him something that important? What if he thought it was stupid?

“Oh,” said Mercury. “That… that makes sense.” His mouth twisted. “I wanted something I shouldn’t want. It was stupid.” Before Emerald could open her mouth, he added, “and I don’t wanna tell you about it.”

Emerald fought down her curiosity—Mrs. Copperfield had always said she was too nosy for her own good—and nodded. “Okay.”

Sirens blaring, a police car broke from the street and rumbled across the gravel of the shipping yard, stopping in front of the foremost warehouse where Pie and Piper were tied up. A man and a woman got out of the car and entered the warehouse, guns drawn. An incredulous laugh sounded from the building, and Emerald couldn’t help a little smirk of triumph when the cops emerged with Pie and Piper in cuffs.

“We did good, didn’t we?” she said.

Mercury cracked a smile. “I guess we did.” He raised his wounded arm, silver-grey aura flickering over the cut. “Coulda been cleaner.”

Emerald ducked her head. “I’m sorry about that.” It had taken less than a week of being her friend to get Mercury hurt. She’d always wanted a friend, but did she really deserve one if she was so much trouble?

Mercury looked at her, incredulous. “It only happened because I was sloppy. That’s not your problem.”

“It happened because you made me your problem!” she snapped, and she knew that if he got scared and vanished on her now, it would hurt too much. She had to give him the choice to at least say good-bye first. “Look, today was really scary, and I understand if you don’t—if you don’t want to get in any more trouble.”

“Em?” Mercury was looking at her with an eyebrow raised. “Do you think that I saved your life so that I could _not_ hang out with you?”

Emerald bit her lip because she was _not_ going to cry and weird out her friend. “Maybe?”

“Aw, c’mon!” He smacked her shoulder. “Who else in this dumb city is going to listen to my brilliant jokes?”

Emerald tapped her chin. “Pigeons?”

Mercury shook his head, cracking a smile. “Uh-uh. Very pompous. No sense of humor. Besides, there’s gonna be no getting rid of me now that I know how _totally helpless_ you are without me. It’d be cruel for me to leave a damsel in distress at this point.”

Emerald swatted the spot on the back of his head where his hair stuck up. “I am a Roof Queen, thank you very much. Not a damsel. Or have you forgotten which of us knocked out that flute-playing b-i-t-c-h with a gardening tool?”

He smirked. "Have you forgotten which one of us still spells out her cuss words?" He glanced down at the cut on his arm, which was now just a smear of blood over unbroken skin. “I should probably get home.”

“Yeah,” said Emerald. “Me too.” But now that she thought about it, a corner behind a dumpster didn’t feel like a big enough home for someone who had brought down a pair of armed criminals. She was a big kid now, and maybe it was time to find someplace new.

Mercury slid back to the ground before she did, and by the time Emerald landed, he was walking quickly back toward the suburbs.

“And Mercury!” she called after him, cupping her hands around her mouth. He half-turned, the gravel crunching under his boots. “Thank you.” She put as much feeling as she could into the words.

Mercury’s eyebrows drew up in the middle in surprise, a little startled smile appearing on his face as he turned away.

Four days later, while Emerald was scouring the city from the rooftops in search of a new place, she stumbled across Lavender’s lair. The ram-horned girl was stacking her crates back into their beehive shape, her knives across her back, and Emerald grinned.

The cops must have used Piper’s scroll to track down the rest of the ring and free her. Lavender was down in that alley, alive and wild-haired and growling at the crates that fell out of place, because of _Emerald._

A warmth stirred in Emerald’s chest. The world was better because of what she and Mercury had done. She wasn’t worthless. She wasn’t alone.

She was definitely going to lift a month’s worth of sour straws as a reward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feral Demon Children: 1  
> Human Traffickers: 0
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! As always, I'm excited to talk with you guys in the comments :) More shenanigans next week!


	4. Bruises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emerald and Mercury take small steps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: Well, Marcus is here and being himself, if only in flashback form, so that's never good.

On the Thursday evening after she and Mercury had taken down the kidnappers, Emerald found a new place to live. A few blocks from their rendezvous point at the bank stood an abandoned apartment complex, seven stories of red brick, all locked up and deserted and covered in graffitied-over white snowflakes after the SDC had bought the property a few years ago to open a Vale branch and then completely forgotten to use it.

Emerald couldn’t imagine having that much money to throw away.

The building itself was locked up tight, with no ways in or out from the ground and some truly overkill defense mechanisms for an abandoned ruin, but there was one small section of it, visible only to roof-hoppers like Emerald, that was unguarded.

It was a glassed-in terrace, six stories up, about the size of the Mr. Copperfield’s office, and by standing on the five-story building next to it, she could swing her pick through one of the glass windows and shinny up the hose. The next part, where she hung by her fingers and pried the window open, was scary but worth it. Once she’d crawled through the window, she was standing in a warm glass prism, the glass smudged enough that no one could see into her haven very clearly. A thick layer of dust coated the floor, but it would be easy enough to clean out.

For the first time since she’d left the orphanage, Emerald had a roof over her head. Her sleeping bag wouldn’t get soaked every time it rained, and the smell of rotting food wouldn’t cling to her day and night. Even better, no one without a grappling hook like her own would have any way of breaking into her new place.

She would be safe here.

Maybe at the store on Saturday, she could pick up a broom and a dustbin. Maybe some pillows, the silly kind with flowers stitched into them. A little shelf to keep books on. She’d have to spread the thefts out over a few weeks, but eventually she’d have a place nice enough that she wouldn’t be embarrassed to invite Mercury over.

She tilted her head back against the low stone wall and smiled, a quiet warmth in her chest. It’d be pretty funny watching him try to clamber through the window. In two days, they’d get to hit up the LargeMart again, and he’d probably make fun of all her choices in pillows, and she’d probably smack him in the face with each of them in turn.

For now, she rolled out her sleeping bag in a shaded corner of the terrace and opened her book of fairy tales.

Saturday would be here soon enough.

And sure enough, Saturday arrived, but it didn’t bring Mercury with it.

Emerald took up her post by the bank around noon, and by three o’clock, she was starting to get nervous, her chest and her fingertips itching as she scanned the crowd for any signs of that orange-brown jacket, that gleaming grey hair.

Maybe Mercury had just gotten a late start, she told herself. Maybe his dad had needed his help cleaning up the lunch dishes. Maybe it was an extra-big lunch that meant there were a _lot_ of dishes to wash.

She kept telling herself that until around four-thirty, when a lump started to form in her throat. Maybe he’d just forgotten that this was their rendezvous point and gone on to the LargeMart itself, but even as Emerald thought it, Mercury’s offended voice sounded through her head— _a Huntsman never needs to be reminded of his target during a job._ But then, Mercury wasn’t really much of a Huntsman yet. Maybe he was there waiting for her, just like she was waiting for him, and they’d have a good laugh about it.

The thought was almost enough to make her run and check the big grocery store, but that would mean abandoning the rendezvous point, and what if Mercury finally showed up and missed her?

Standing in place for so long made her legs ache, and she started jogging back and forth, checking both alleys beside the bank, crossing through the plaza just in case.

At five-thirty, she finally made her way to the LargeMart and trawled every aisle in the store, from produce to electronics, in search of him. She managed to swipe a few days’ worth of food plus a collapsible broom and dustbin, but there was no sign of Mercury.

She thought of checking out through Cypress’s station and asking if she’d seen her friend, but the poor cashier clearly had her hands full with a white-haired guy who snapped at her every time she tried to make small talk.

At six-thirty, she was back in the square outside of the bank. Maybe Mercury would show up in the fading rays of sunset, just for a minute or two, and explain where he’d been.

At seven o’-clock, Emerald went home.

Mercury had forgotten about her.

The terrace that had felt like a perfect lair this morning now just looked like a dingy, barren cupboard made of stone, another closet she was locked in because she’d never belong. She curled up small on her sleeping bag and tried to fight down the lump in her throat that wouldn’t go away.

Mrs. Copperfield was right. Emerald was dangerous, and her eyes were scary, and nobody in their right mind would ever want her around.

The next day, she spent the morning sweeping the terrace floor until it gleamed. She stacked her books against the wall and propped the broom beside them, and she _did not think_ about how Mercury didn’t want to see her again.

She spent the afternoon in the plaza outside the bank, telling herself that she wasn’t waiting for him. But she _was_ waiting for him, and he never came.

What had she expected? She’d only met the kid twice, and sure, they’d gotten along okay, but she’d also gotten his arm sliced open. He was a ‘burb-dweller. Of course he would decide that she was too much trouble to fit into his neat little life, and she couldn’t even blame him.

Except that he’d as good as promised that he would come back.

 _“Em? Do you think I saved your life so that I could_ not _hang out with you?”_

Apparently, he had. It wasn’t like people hadn’t lied to Emerald before. Grown-ups would come by the orphanage and say how cute her hair was and what a little angel she looked like, even with those eyes, and how much they’d love to take her home with them, but they never did.

Mercury was just the same. He’d thought she was fun for a while, and then he’d gotten bored and gone back to the people who could actually give him something in exchange for caring about them.

Emerald went back to the bank plaza every day that week, and oh, she hated herself for that, for the corner of her mind that wanted to believe the lie just a little longer.

By the next Saturday, she wasn’t sure she could stand the disappointment for an eighth day in a row, but she climbed down from the terrace anyway, not even sure why she was doing it at this point.

She reached the plaza around one, and the second she stepped out of the crowd and into the shadow of the bank, a voice called out, _“Emerald!”_

Emerald whirled toward the sound, her heart leaping because he came back, he came _back,_ no one ever came back, and there was Mercury, elbowing people out of his way and drawing a lot of angry looks as he made a beeline for her at a run. Only, he wasn’t running right. The weightless speed that usually joined him when he ran was gone, replaced by an awkward lurching as he favored his right leg over his left.

When he stopped in front of her, grinning and breathing hard, the sunlight revealed a purpling bruise around his left eye.

“Didn’t mean to miss last week,” he said, at the same time she cried out, “What _happened_ to you?”

Already, horrible scenarios were running through her mind—Pie and Piper escaped from jail and looking for revenge, or their more powerful employers seeking out new targets.

Mercury’s grin turned sheepish. “Would you believe me if I said I got it slaying a Beringel?”

Emerald crossed her arms. “What do you think?”

“Ugh. Fine.” Mercury sighed. “I fell out of a tree. I fell out of a tree a lot of times, are you happy?”

Mercury seemed like he was generally too agile to let a tree branch smack him in the eye.

“Not exactly,” she said, leaning in to inspect his black eye again, and this time he glanced away, hiding it behind the other side of his face. “Is it also why you missed last week’s rendezvous?”

“Kinda?” he said, holding up his right arm. The rent that Piper’s weapon had left in his jacket had been patched over with black cloth. “Dad saw I’d gotten in a fight, and he said I was grounded for two weeks. He didn’t like that I got hurt.”

Again, that quiet unbidden jealousy that Mercury had someone who cared when he got hurt, that he had someone who could make him willingly leave her alone.

“The jerk should let you do what you want,” she grumbled.

“Em, don’t—don’t call him that.” At the hurt look on his face, Emerald backed down. He kept the bruised side of his face turned away from her as he talked. “Anyway, our house is… it’s kind of empty, and I got a little stir crazy and kept trying to get out, and there’s this big tree in the backyard that has branches that go over the fence, and… it turns out that Vale trees are not as strong as mountain trees. But I kept trying, and I got clumsy, and my aura broke.”

“After you fell out a few times, couldn’t he just get the message and let you go?”

Mercury cracked a smile. “Why do you think I’m allowed to be here now? C’mon, let’s get to LargeMart, time’s wasting.”

He moved like he was trying to walk briskly toward the alley, but he winced and stumbled as soon as he put weight on his left leg. Emerald caught him by the arm before he could fall. He twisted, trying to free his arm.

“I can walk by myself just fine, okay!” he exclaimed, and his sudden anger almost made her recoil. Instead, she pressed her mouth into a line and tightened her grip.

This idiot wolf-boy had fallen out of a tree a non-zero number of times because he wanted to see her. Because he cared that much. He’d made her his problem, and that meant that he was her problem now, too.

“I know you can,” she said, pulling his arm across her shoulders, “but you’ll walk even better if you just let me help you, dummy.”

“I’m not weak!” he snapped. “You don’t have to—”

“Merc!” At that, he cast a nervous glance her way. “I know you’re tough. I’ve seen you knock people out with your shoes twice. I get it.” She looped an arm around his waist, pulling him close so that the weight of his left leg fell on her right instead, and realized suddenly that she’d never gotten this close to another person, unless you counted the time Rex Aurum had python-squeezed her until she choked to get her to give him the book she’d been reading (Emerald didn’t count it). Mrs. Copperfield had told all the other kids that she wasn’t safe to hug.

Mercury frowned. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. So quietly that Emerald almost couldn’t hear him even though their heads were leaned close together, he said, “Okay.”

“Besides,” she said, as they took their first, wobbling step together, “it’d be cruel for me to leave a damsel in distress at this point.”

Mercury just growled.

* * *

Mercury really had fallen out of a tree. He’d tried to scramble up it during his training this morning only for the garotte wire of Dad’s weapon to coil itself around his ankle and bring him crashing back to earth. The fall had shattered his aura, and then Dad had done the rest.

It was all Birdbrain’s fault.

The knowledge that he wanted Dad to go soft, to stop training him, ran through Mercury’s veins like poison, making him clumsy and weak. Every time Dad raised his fist, the panic that shot through Mercury grated and screeched against the vision of what he wanted, of a father whose hand only rose into the air when he was throwing a ball for their dog. That moment of contrast left him frozen, torn between the softness of the vision and the bloody fact bearing down on him. It made him too slow. It left him with more bruises.

On top of that, the blood-stained rent in Mercury’s jacket had brought trouble of its own. Dad had scoffed on seeing it.

 _One week in the city, and you’ve already bitten off more than you can chew?_ Dad had bitten out a laugh, after that. He’d set down the bottle and dragged Mercury out to the backyard to train until he couldn’t stand upright.

Not once during the whole week did he have a training session that he could escape from with a few cursory bruises. When Saturday morning had rolled around, Dad had challenged Mercury to a fight to prove he was competent enough to be trusted out on the town again.

Mercury had failed so badly that by the time he’d managed to calm the ringing in his head and drag himself up into one of the kitchen chairs, Dad had come home with the groceries, and his rendezvous with Emerald had long since passed.

This morning, Dad had challenged him again, and again, Dad had broken his aura and hit him until he stopped trying to get up. But this time, Mercury had been able to call his aura back more quickly, and within an hour of the fight, he was up and walking again, stumbling down the road toward Emerald with his grocery bag in hand and doing his best to tune out the molten throbbing in his left knee from where Dad had brought his foot down hard on it.

If he’d survived the past two weeks, passed one of Dad’s combat tests, he deserved to enjoy himself a little bit, right?

A voice at the back of his head that sounded a lot like Dad said that that was a stupid thing to think.

But now Emerald was here—here and pushy and obnoxious and grinning at the sight of him—and he gave in to the weak part of himself, the one that Piper’s song had shown to him, that wanted to stop getting hurt.

He let her drag his arm over her shoulder, let her set a hand over his ribs. Emerald was stronger than she looked, and it was an effort not to tense, not to imagine the ways she could use that strength to throw him back to the ground and then kick. But she just used it to hold him upright, and the vanishing of the pain in his knee was a relief.

It was the most anyone had ever touched him without hurting him.

Walking was awkward, trying to make his right leg move at the same time as Emerald’s left one, letting his head jostle against her shoulder when she took the weight from his left leg and pressed forward another step. Still, they made surprisingly decent time on the way to the LargeMart.

“Hmm,” he said, squinting at the automatic doors. “I feel like we’re gonna get a lot of weird looks if we go in like this.”

“Weird looks are bad for our line of work,” Emerald said thoughtfully before her face brightened. “I have an idea! You’re gonna hate it!”

“Em? Em?” She didn’t answer, just kept hurrying them toward the cart corral. “Em, I can just walk!”

“Nope!” she said, releasing her hold on his arm and freeing a cart from the herd. “Not happening!”

She caught him under the arms, green aura glowing over her hands, and lifted. Panic sparked in his chest. He’d let himself be weak, and now the other shoe would drop, and he would deserve it.

“Em, hold up, what are you—ack!” He landed sprawling in the body of the shopping cart with his bad leg hooked over the side. Indignant, he shook the hair out of his face. “Emerald!”

She folded her arms on the side of the cart and rested her chin on them, giggling. “Toldja you’d hate it.” She frowned. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Mercury braced an arm over his chest, hoping he could slow the frantic pounding inside of it.

“Nah.” He shrugged. “Just my pride.” Except his stupid heart wouldn’t cut it out, even though his brain knew he wasn’t in trouble. That wasn’t Emerald’s problem, just him being weak, but… he kind of hoped she wouldn’t do it again.

Sometimes, toward the end of training sessions, when the pain was enough to make him see colors wrong, Mercury would lose control of himself and shout, “Stop!” and he regretted every time he’d let that word out of his mouth. He’d never been stupid enough to ask Dad not to do something before they started a round of training. That would just be giving away a weakness.

But Emerald… she didn’t seem to know that you weren’t supposed to ask things of your contacts or your opponents. She wouldn’t know how weak he was being if he asked her not to do it again.

She was still looking at him, head tilted to the side in question.

He closed his eyes, forced the words out before he could rethink them. “Could you tell me what you’re doing next time? Before you do it?”

He opened his eyes, half-expecting to see Emerald sneering at him for asking such stupid questions, but she was still wearing the same sunny expression as before.

“Okay!” she said, circling the cart and taking up the handle. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you out, I just thought you’d fight me too hard for it to work if you knew.”

Mercury leaned back against the side of the cart, the throbbing in his chest dwindling. “You were probably right.”

He didn’t realize until they’d passed through the automatic doors of the LargeMart that it was the first time that anyone had told him that they were sorry.

Emerald brought a lot of weird firsts with her.

They got the first few items on the list pretty quietly while Mercury focused on channeling his aura into his knee to stop the swelling feeling inside it. But somewhere around the peanut butter, a thought occurred to him.

Maybe he’d earned a _little_ fun.

“Emerald?” He cast her a sidelong glance over his shoulder, and she looked up from the wall of livid Pumpkin Pete’s cereal boxes.

“Yeah?”

He drummed two fingers on the side of the cart. “How fast do you figure this thing can go?”

The answer turned out to be “so fast that Emerald didn’t even have to push anymore, so she jumped her feet up on the rail, and the world turned into a whirlwind of color and speed, and Emerald was laughing, and Mercury was laughing too, and when they plowed into a sofa in the furniture department they had no regrets.”

In the crash, Emerald fell over the handlebars, still cackling. “Oh, we should do that again!”

Mercury was laughing so hard that his sides hurt and his chest felt light. “Did—did you see that lady in aisle three?”

“Oh, she was so _angry!”_ Emerald beamed. “And that hat!”

“Maybe we shoulda run over her toes.”

“Merc!”

“Come on, tell me she didn’t look like a person who’d have a funny scream.”

“Okay, yeah, she looked like she’d kind of opera sing it.”

“A wasted opportunity.”

“Ooh!” Emerald’s eye caught on something over Mercury’s shoulder, and he turned to see what it was. “I’ve been meaning to look at these with you!”

She steered him over to a big display a few feet away, and he frowned in confusion.

“Em, this is not what you hired me for.” Stretching up above him was a shelf full of tiny, useless pillows with cute little drawings stitched into them. They were exactly the kind of thing that Marcus Black wouldn’t let within his property line, let alone his house.

“Well, there aren’t any armed kidnappers after me this week,” said Emerald, “so you’re just going to have to help me pick out decorations for my new villainous lair, okay?”

In reply, Mercury shot a single, mutinous glare up at her.

“That’s the spirit!” She grinned, clearly enjoying this way too much. “Now, I think that this one with the ponies is _really_ cute, and I think the pink really makes it kind of pop, and—”

Mercury pointed at two of the ponies in question, one of which was rearing up against the dumb stitched sunset. “Those ones look like they’re making more ponies.”

Emerald squeaked and dropped the pillow, then kicked it under the shelf. Mercury fought down a laugh.

“See?” she said, her voice a little higher than usual. “You saved me from making a grave error.”

Mercury smirked and sat forward, resting his forearms on the edge of the cart.

“Okay,” Emerald said, recovering. “What about this one?” She practically shoved it into his face, and he batted it away, because that embroidery looked really scratchy. “You can’t object to the kittens. Kittens are the best.”

“Easy—dogs are better.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“Nuh-uh!”

“Uh-huh!”

For a moment, they just glared at each other, waiting to see who would back down first. Mercury narrowed his eyes, resolved that it wouldn’t be him.

“Fine, then!” said Emerald.

_Ha._

“You want puppies, they’ve _got_ puppies!” She whipped another pillow off the shelf and slung it at him. He caught it, and something about all their shiny little thready pink tongues completely skeeved him out.

“Nope!” He shook his head. “Their tongues are bad.”

“Hmmmm.” Emerald squinted up at the display, then stood on her tiptoes to pull down a pillow from higher on the shelf. “How about this one?”

This one had cows. Some of them were standing up on their back legs like they were people. All of them had udders.

“Em, this is horrifying.” Mercury goggled at the awful thing, almost as impressed as he was disgusted. “It’s gonna haunt my nightmares.”

Emerald took it back from him and smiled down on it. “Then it’s perfect.” She quirked an eyebrow. “The fearless Mercury gets nightmares?”

Mercury snorted. “He does now that he’s seen _that.”_

By the time they left the LargeMart, Mercury could hop out of the cart and land without a spike of protest from his knee, but even though he could have run straight home, he walked with Emerald and her backpack of stolen goods all the way back to the bank. She kept using her Semblance to hide herself from him while she slipped the cow pillow out of her rucksack and positioned it right in front of his face so that he either yelped in horror or walked straight into it. They both laughed every time, even when the surprise should have worn off.

When he got back home and closed the door that sealed him and Dad away in a small, dim house that smelled of liquor, he couldn’t help but think of all the things he was shutting out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a short chapter tying up some loose ends this week, but tune in next week for *checks smudged writing on hand* um. Angst. I'm sorry.
> 
> Again, thanks for reading, and I'm excited to talk with you guys in the comments :) Cheers!


	5. Cold Seasons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mercury's training fails him, Emerald confronts her past, and I somehow allowed this bizarre non-sequitur of a Qrow cameo to survive the editing process.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time's gonna start speeding up some, with these next two chapters covering the four most important moments in the first year of Em and Merc's friendship, leading up to the arc finale two weeks from now.
> 
> cw: Mercury's brain is not a happy place to be this chapter, and he's going to think and do some things that are upsetting. Also, Marcus is here, but not being actively violent.

Mercury’s ninth birthday had come and gone, and the tree in the backyard was starting to shed its red, five-pointed leaves. And he was becoming aware of a problem.

Emerald was weak.

Mercury had been noticing little hints of it for a while now—the way she insisted on leaving Pie and Piper alive, how she always asked Mercury if something was okay after she did it, how she used her Semblance to avoid a straight fight at every turn. But the realization didn’t fully crash down on him until an evening in the middle of September.

He was standing at the stove, folding an omelet in half, because Dad didn’t seem to hate omelets too much, and they were one of the only things Mercury could cook without a cookbook, which Dad staunchly refused to buy on the grounds that Mercury would be too stupid to read it. He hoped Dad would get back from his job soon, before it could get cold.

Then the door swung open, and before Mercury saw Dad, he heard him, whistling. That happened maybe twice a year. Mercury slid the omelet onto a plate and delivered it to Dad’s place at the table. Before Dad could fully reach the dining room, Mercury retreated back around the counter to start making his own dinner.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Dad sit down at the table, watched him plunk down the brown paper grocery bag that he’d learned to associate with the liquor store.

“You know what today is, kid?” Dad’s smile, on the rare occasions when it existed, always seemed to have a few too many teeth in it.

“No sir,” Mercury said, keeping his head down as he cracked the last egg into the plastic bowl.

“It’s a good day.” Dad pulled a bottle out of the bag, flipped the cap off, and tipped it back. “That’s what today is.”

There was a silence, and Mercury realized that Dad was waiting for him to speak. Questions were usually a bad idea, but if he waited too much longer to talk, Dad might think Mercury was ignoring him, and that would be even worse. He pushed the bowl of eggs to the back of the counter before he spoke.

“What makes it good?” he asked, and braced himself.

Dad sat back with a satisfied smile, and Mercury relaxed and went back to whisking the eggs with a fork.

“What makes it good,” Dad said, “is that I got paid for one of the easiest jobs I’ve ever done.”

“Yeah?” Mercury was grating the pepper now, and if he could get this thing cooked without making Dad snap, it’d be the best dinner he’d had in weeks.

“Yeah. Small-time pest was sneaking into the Tabard gang’s place, stealing their loot, so Ma Rothschild called an exterminator.” Dad smiled at his own joke, and Mercury did too, just to be safe, as he poured the eggs into the skillet.

“And this guy thought he was _soooo_ smart with his tricky little illusions.” Mercury’s shoulders tightened. He couldn’t help but think of someone else who thought she was smart and used tricky little illusions.

“The rat could make himself soundless, and his only weapon was some high-tech invisibility cloak, and he actually thought that would be enough!” Dad let out a laugh. “Thought no one would ever find him and he’d never have to fight.” He shook his head. “I wish I could show you the look on his face when I ripped his Semblance out of him. You’d understand where weakness gets you, then.”

Mercury forced out a chuckle, fidgeting with the spatula. “Bet it was pretty good.” Emerald, when Pie backed her into a corner, shrieking as she dodged his fists, helpless without her Semblance.

He didn’t want to imagine the look on her face if she lost it for real.

Dad laughed. “I mean, _you_ could probably have killed this guy, Merc. I never thought anyone could get that weak.”

Emerald was that weak.

Dad took a bite of the omelet. “Not bad,” he said, and even though it was the highest compliment Mercury had earned in over a year, it barely registered in his brain. “Not bad at all.” He wolfed it down in the time took Mercury’s to be done enough to fold.

“Now,” said Dad, scooping the bottle up off the table, “I’m gonna go celebrate. Don’t you burn the house down.”

“Of course, Dad,” Mercury said, and Dad vanished down the hall.

Emerald was weak.

Weak people died.

Mercury stared at the omelet until it burned.

The next day was a Saturday, and Dad was still fending off a hangover when Mercury set out. Normally, he would revel in the sharp autumn air, in the fact that his jacket wasn’t a burden anymore. Instead, he took off toward downtown at a dead sprint, chest thudding.

When he got to the alley by the bank, Emerald was waiting for him, just like she always did. If she was too weak to fend off the next goon that attacked her, that would end.

“Em!” He skidded to a halt in front of her. “We’ve gotta make the LargeMart trip a short one today.”

Emerald cocked her head to the side and smiled. “Is this your way of asking if you can ride in the cart again? Because I’m pretty sure it’s my turn.”

“No!” Did she not know how easy it would be for someone like Dad to take her down? “No, this is actually important.”

“Hey, the cart ride _is_ important, _and_ it’s my turn.”

 _“No!”_ Mercury burst out. “No, forget the stupid cart!”

Emerald recoiled like he’d slapped her, and something in him crumpled at the knowledge that he might actually have to slap her if she was going to get strong. He set his jaw and kept going.

“You know, if you don’t learn to fight without your Semblance, you could get killed!” He scowled. “I want to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“Mercury,” she matched his glare and talked slowly, like he was stupid. “I’m not _incompetent.”_ She brandished the word like it was a club. “My Semblance has kept me alive for a year and a half just fine.”

“Was it just fine when you were starving because those goons were tracking it?” he snapped. “Was it just fine when Pie had you trapped in a corner and started punching? You need training, Em!”

Emerald cut her eyes at him. “You’re a jerk today.”

“I’m a jerk who’s right.”

“Fine,” she grumbled. “But after I kick your butt, can you please drop it?”

“I’ll drop it when you’re strong,” Mercury said, and his father’s voice echoed bitterly in his throat.

Once they’d made their LargeMart run—Emerald made them check out with Cypress again, which was _definitely_ just to spite him—they took to the skyline and made their way back to the rooftop where they’d first shared candy and struck their bargain.

Neither of them cracked any jokes on the way there.

Once he’d climbed up after Emerald, Mercury slid into a fighting stance.

“This is the deal,” he said. “We fight to aura break—”

“Like the Vytal tournament?” Emerald asked, her eyes lighting up a little.

Mercury rolled his eyes. Dad said the Vytal tournament was a stupid display, a chance for pampered kids to show off.

“Sure, like that,” he went on. “And you don’t use your Semblance. You can keep your weapon.” He nodded at her hose. “And I can keep mine.” He tapped the steel toe of his boot on the gravel.

“Let’s go.”

Emerald was angry with him, and that made her clumsy. It was easy for him to roll under the first swing of her weapon and drive a boot up into her stomach. She staggered back a couple of steps, baring her teeth, and Mercury took the initiative. He spun and jumped, aiming a kick at her chin, but she rolled into a somersault and retreated.

She was quick, at least, and good at dodging when she wasn’t too blinded by rage. Maybe there was some hope for her.

Still, a retreat was a retreat, and Mercury pressed his advantage, launching himself into the air and descending with both feet pointed at Emerald’s face. She blocked him with her pick and a flare of aura along her forearm and shoved, forcing him to land in a crouch a few paces away, a little unsteady.

Before he could plot his next move, Emerald’s pick shot toward him and coiled around his wrist. With a cry, she yanked him off his feet, and he had to admit, it was a pretty good move. Unfortunately for Emerald, he was better. He twisted, getting his feet under him before he could crash into the ground, and then pivoted and dealt a kick to her hip. Emerald stumbled, and he pulled himself free of the hose.

She swung out again, but her stance was sloppy, and he cleared the swing of her weapon with a single jump before slamming his heel back down into the side of Emerald’s knee, breaking her stance and sending her stumbling away again.

He recognized this part of the fight, the slow retreat when the winner was already clear. He’d never been the winner before.

In a final ploy, Emerald whipped her mini-pick toward Mercury’s wrist again, but this time he was ready. He whirled out of the way of the pick, then caught the line of the hose and wrenched it upward. The other end of the hose flew free of Emerald’s hand, and the metal bit affixed to it cracked into her chin.

Jade green aura flared and shattered as Emerald pitched backward and landed sprawling in the gravel.

Mercury dropped her weapon but stayed in his stance. This next part, Dad had taught him, was the most important. Pain made the lesson stick, made you remember the cost of weakness and fight to get stronger. When he was so sore that he couldn’t sleep no matter which way he rolled, he reminded himself of that fact, that every bruise keeping him from sleep was a lesson that would make him stronger one day.

That in the end, Dad really did want the best for him.

His brow furrowed as he doubled up his fists. He wanted the best for Emerald. He did, he did, he thought as he took a step closer to her tangled legs, her disarrayed pigtails.

She sat up on her skinned elbows, and whatever she saw in his face must have scared her, because she let out a little gasp, her eyes going wide.  
  
“Merc?” Her voice was so small.

If he smashed his boot into Emerald’s jaw now, he knew exactly what it would do. He knew how it would make the world ring with horrible noise, how the bruise would form almost instantly and pulse and swell every time a vein pumped blood across it, how she would be able to count heartbeats with each throb of the wound. He knew how hard it would be to talk, how much it would hurt to eat.

Em really liked eating.

He knew what he was supposed to do. He’d seen it done, had it done _to_ him, more times than he knew how to count, and yet the thought of doing it to Emerald made him want to fall down on all fours in the gravel and throw up.

How did Dad do this? How strong did you have to be to ram a boot not just into a contact’s face, but your kid’s?

For the first time, the idea of being that strong made Mercury’s stomach feel cold.

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this, and Emerald would probably die in an alley somewhere because he didn’t have the guts to make the lesson stick.

An anguished shout broke from between Mercury’s teeth, and he dropped to his knees.

The gravel leered at him, fang-like. It crunched quietly, the sound of Emerald sitting up.

“Merc?” Her voice wobbled. “What was that?”

He came so, so close to telling her everything, to telling her that his dad hit him to make him stronger, that he needed her to be stronger so that he wouldn’t be left alone with his dad who hit him, that he wasn’t strong enough to make her strong.

The words clogged in his throat, and all that came out was a strangled, hiccupping sound, followed by, “I’m sorry.”

“Are—are you angry at me? Did I do something?” He looked over at Emerald, who was leaning toward him, but with an arm pulled in close to her chest like a shield. Her eyes still had that scared look.

“No,” he said. He shook his head, then said it more firmly. _“No.”_

Because none of this was Emerald’s fault. Because she made him angry sometimes, but that never made him want to hit her with anything other than that creepy cow pillow.

Because anyone who hit Emerald deserved to get fed to a pack of Beowulves.

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I—I messed up.” He knew that the mistake he’d made was failing to make the lesson stick, but he couldn’t help but feel that the mess-up he was admitting to was ever thinking that hurting Emerald was an option.

“Are you okay?” he asked, because that was what she always asked when she thought she might have hurt him by mistake.

“My elbows sting,” she whispered, and a tear rolled down her face, and gods, he had no idea what to do about that, but he did know what to do about her injuries.

“Okay,” he said, forcing himself to take a breath, to calm his mind. “Okay, I know how to help with that.” He maneuvered himself so that he was sitting in front of her with his legs crossed. “Em, can you sit like me?”

She nodded and wiped the tear away with the back of her hand. He got a good look at her elbow, then, torn and bloodied where the gravel had bitten into it. He’d done that. He had to fix it.

Emerald mirrored him, crossing her legs and resting her hands on her knees. She still trusted him, and his chest hurt because he knew that he didn’t deserve it.

“So,” he said, “we’re gonna try and re-grow your aura as quick as we can, okay?”

“Okay.”

Dad usually stubbed out cigars on his shoulder during this next part and didn’t stop until Mercury’s aura was strong enough to repel the embers. But if he took out the burning, he could teach at least some of it to Emerald.

“Closing your eyes helps you concentrate,” he said, and Emerald closed them, green eyebrows furrowing in thought. “Your aura—it’s your soul, but outside of you, yeah? So, you focus on the things that make you feel most like yourself, like—” he cast about for things that seemed to belong to Emerald alone—“like that smile you get when your pick sinks into a roof just right, or when you’ve been falling and your hose starts to swing you up again, or whyever it is that you’re so obsessed with those gross string candies. And—the things you think of don’t have to be happy.”

The feeling that worked the best for Mercury was the sensation of being laid out on the ground, ribs aching, head pounding. He drew on that stubborn, steely core of emotion in his chest, the one that got him to brace himself on his trembling forearms, then press himself up to his knees, then his feet, then take the next hit.

“And you take that feeling that’s there at the center of you, and you press it out to the edges. Like it’s armor all the way out to your fingers.”

“Armor,” Emerald whispered, a tiny smile forming on her face.

Mercury sat and watched her breathe, the way her mouth twisted as she tried to focus. What if it didn’t work? What if he could only hurt her? Minutes slid past, one. Two. Three, four, five…

A faint green glow formed in the center of Emerald’s chest, then grew stronger, spreading outwards, down her stomach and across her shoulders. The glowing sheen rolled down her arms, sparking and flickering when it reached the wounds on her elbows, then kept rolling, leaving smooth brown skin unbroken again. When the wave reached Emerald’s fingertips, her eyes flicked open.

She held her healed arms up in front of her face, inspecting them. “Neat.”

“Better?” Mercury asked, ducking his head.

“Yeah,” she said, lowering her arms, starting to frown. “But Merc, why—why were you so upset with me? I still don’t understand.”

How could he explain? How, without giving away what Dad was, what he was supposed to become? He couldn’t blow their cover, not even to Emerald, or Dad would be _so angry._

He waited a long moment before he trusted himself to speak. “I just realized, I guess. How easy it would be for someone to kill you if I wasn’t there to help. But—I’ve only ever fought monsters, like Grimm, or really awful people like those goons. I—I shouldn’t have fought you like you were a monster, Em.”

 _I shouldn’t have fought you like_ I _was one._

Emerald bit her lip and nodded. “Okay. Okay. Just— _please_ never fight me like that again.” She squeezed her eyes shut.

 _“Never,_ Em,” he said. “I promise.”

He’d never made a promise before, but the word felt unbreakable as he said it.

They both inched back, bit by bit, until they were sitting next to each other, leaning up against the wall that bordered the roof. Mercury couldn’t bring himself to say anything more. He just tilted his head back against the bricks and let his eyes fall shut, trying to make his breathing fall into line with Emerald’s.

He’d dealt a blow to the weird trust that tied them together, he knew, and he was waiting to see if it would hold, or if Emerald would let it fall apart, leave him behind. He wouldn’t blame her.

Emerald’s shoulder nudged his own, and he looked over at her. She had her eyebrows drawn up in the middle, like he was the one who’d been wounded.

“Mercury,” she said quietly. “You know you’re not a monster either, right?”

Mercury looked down at the steel toes of his boots. He didn’t know that. He couldn’t make himself answer, even though he could feel Emerald staring at him in his periphery.

Instead, he said, “Will I still see you next week? It’s—I get it, if you don’t—”

“You’ll see me,” said Emerald, with another gentle bump of her shoulder, and Mercury blinked hard to stop the stinging behind his eyes.

It wasn’t until he was halfway home that he realized he had lumped Dad in with the monsters.

* * *

Mercury treated Emerald like she was made of tissue paper for the next month and a half, and it would have seriously bugged her if he hadn’t seemed so scared.

If she hadn’t been a little scared herself.

There were no more hair-raising cart races through the LargeMart, no more silly jabs at her taste in houseware. He’d just show up at the bank every Saturday, hands in his pockets, and follow her to the store, his eyes scanning the rooftops for dangers that weren’t there.

Something bad had happened to Mercury, out in the wilds, but Emerald didn’t dare ask what. She didn’t want to make him upset with her again.

She’d take this subdued Mercury over whatever he had been the day that they’d fought. His voice had been hard and mocking, and there had been a moment, after her aura had shattered, when he had loomed over her, and she had been convinced that he was about to kick her in the teeth. Whoever that person was, he wasn’t her friend.

Emerald had been shoved down hard before, seen eyes glowering down at her in triumph, gold eyes mostly. But she’d never thought that she’d see that same look in Mercury’s grey ones, even if it flickered out in an instant.

Maybe she really was as hard to like as Mrs. Copperfield said she was.

Mercury only started to act like himself again around mid-November, when Emerald had proposed stealing a series of patently hideous sweaters now that the weather had gotten too cold for the olive green tank top and khaki capris that had served her so well in the summertime. She had, after menacing him with a hot-pink turtleneck with pom-poms on the sleeves (an action which made him threaten to discontinue their partnership then and there), settled on a nice dark green one with a little red flower on the shoulder.

After that, the jokes came back, and everything felt a little better

Her terrace was almost totally furnished now, with cushions against the walls and a tiny bookshelf hanging from the windowsill by her sleeping bag. No amount of money in the world would make her admit that she slept with the horrible cow pillow bundled tight against her chest.

The place felt more like home than anywhere else she’d ever lived, and she wasn’t going to abandon it just because the weather turned against her. But every day was colder than the last, and on the first Saturday of December, when she woke up and forced herself out of her sleeping bag and into the frigid air only to find that all her protein bars had frozen solid and inedible, she wished she had somewhere warm to go.

Mercury was a couple minutes late to the bank that day, and while she waited for him, Emerald twisted back and forth in place, rubbing her hands up and down her arms as the chill breeze nipped at them.

“Nice dance,” he said dryly. “You really feeling the Nondescript Winter Holiday spirit?”

Emerald rolled her eyes. “Not a chance.”

At the orphanage, Nondescript Winter Holiday had been the perfect chance for all the employees to show just which kids were their favorites. The Janus twins had gotten these cool, many-jointed action figures that each came with more changes of clothes than Emerald had ever owned. That rotten Rex Aurum had gotten a gleaming plastic sword that he would jab in Emerald’s face at playtime.

 _Grimm eyes!_ He’d jeer, trying to get ahold of her hair and yank. _Grimm eyes!_

Emerald and her Grimm eyes had gotten a cheap plastic toy that someone had clearly fished out of their fast-food meal on the way to work.

No, no, she was not feeling the Nondescript Winter Holiday spirit.

She was feeling it even less when they actually reached to the LargeMart to discover a gaunt, red-eyed man who reeked of whiskey standing outside the entrance with a bell and a holly-printed collection bucket. A pointed red hat sagged on his head, and the red suit he was wearing hung from his bony shoulders.

Mercury bristled, wrinkling his nose, and tugged Emerald away from the guy by her sleeve the second the scent of alcohol reached them, but Emerald froze when she heard the words coming out of his mouth.

“Copperfield Safe Home,” the guy slurred. “Donate for Nondescript Winter Holiday!”

Something cold coiled up in Emerald’s chest.

“Em, come on,” Mercury tugged on her arm, his voice jittery, and she blinked. They hurried into the store and away from the smelly guy asking for money for the place that had never stopped making her hands shake.

Even once the automatic doors had sealed out the smell of the guy and the hounding December winds, Emerald shivered, her teeth rattling.

Mercury looked at her, assessing, as he pulled a cart free. “Get in,” he said, pointing.

“It’s your turn this week, isn’t it?” she asked.

“It’s yours now,” he said. “So, am I gonna have to chuck you in like you did with me the first time?”

“No, I’ll go,” said Emerald, and she heaved herself over the side of the cart. Her head was spinning, and she didn’t quite trust herself to walk. She wondered if Rex Aurum still had that sword, if it still failed to leave bruises and made Mrs. Copperfield call the girls who ran to her in tears liars.

She slumped against the side of the cart, letting the cold grating dig into her back. Maybe all the kids there were happy now, now that they’d gotten rid of the Grimm-eyed girl they all hated. Maybe Mrs. Copperfield had turned kind and generous, and they were all warm and safe and happy while Emerald ate frost-bitten protein bars on the street.

Something about that thought stung even more.

They were about two-thirds of the way through Mercury’s usual route through the store, the shelves all blurring together for Emerald, when he finally spoke.

“You there, Em?” he asked. “We passed the gross health foods and you didn’t grab anything.”

Emerald shook herself out of her trance. “Right—you mind going back for them?”

“Nah,” said Mercury, but he frowned. “You weren’t weird before we saw that guy outside. Did—did him being drunk creep you out?”

Emerald shook her head and hugged herself. Mercury brought the cart to a halt in the furniture aisle. There were less people there.

“It wasn’t the guy,” she said. “It was the place he was raising money for.”

Mercury flopped down on the sofa he’d parked the cart next to and raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“You know how I’ve mentioned that there’s an orphanage I really don’t want to go back to?”

Mercury nodded, like he was starting to put the pieces together. “Yeah.”

“It was Copperfield. And—I get cold a lot now, and I’m hungry _so much,_ but there—” a shudder ran through her—“it was so much colder there, and they were all so, _so_ mean to me, even the grown-ups, and—” she drew a shaky breath and let it back out before she could cry. She didn’t trust her voice not to break.

Mercury jumped up from the couch and folded his arms on the rail of the cart, looking down at her with his eyebrows furrowed.

“Em,” he said, his voice softer than she’d ever heard it. “We’re gonna rob that asshole blind.”

He had never looked more like the Huntsman he claimed to be than in that moment. She matched the set of his jaw and smiled a smile that was more a baring of teeth than anything else.

“We are.”

After she and Mercury passed through the check-out, she stretched her Semblance out past the glass of the automatic doors and touched the bell-ringer’s mind, feeding it the image of sealed doors and a full pail of money and _no_ hungry-faced street urchins emerging from the store to reach their hands into said pail. The illusion was perfect.

Except that the pail had a lid, which they’d somehow have to disconnect to get to the cash. Without the bell-ringer feeling it.

“Cover me,” Emerald whispered, and Mercury nodded, circling the oblivious bell-ringer and sliding into a fighting stance on his other side. She blinked back the memory of the last time he’d taken up that stance, the feeling of gravel biting into her skin.

Forcing her concentration to hold, tuning out the burn of alcohol in her sinuses, she set one hand on the pail’s lid and the other on the bucket itself and pulled. The bucket of cash fell, and Emerald caught it between her knees before it could make a sound.

“What are you doing?” A teenaged girl walking out of the store with a bag in hand gawked at them, and Emerald scrambled back a few paces with the pail. The illusion snapped. “You little shits!”

Mercury stayed motionless, tensing in the bell-ringer’s blind spot.

“Sir!” the girl shouted. “That girl just robbed you!”

“Hm?” The guy shook himself out of a stupor and frowned at Emerald and then at the handle clenched in his fist. “So she did.” His voice was gravelly, burned low by liquor. He looked at the girl. “Maybe go inside while I handle this, ‘kay?”

The girl nodded and vanished through the doors.

“Look, kid,” the guy said. “I get it. You’re trying to be cool. But there’s other kids that need that money a lot more than you. So you’re gonna give it back now, or I’m gonna have to take it back because that’s my job.”

Emerald shifted back a step and cut her eyes at the bell-ringer.

Mercury sprang.

He aimed his boot right at the back of the guy’s neck. And faster than thought, the guy reached over his shoulder and caught Mercury’s ankle. Mercury snarled and slammed his other foot into the bell-ringer’s jaw, and that hit landed, only to bounce off dark red aura.

“Mother of gods, kid!” the bell-ringer groused, as Mercury cried out, “ _Emrunhe’saHuntsman!”_

The bell-ringer caught Mercury by the wrist, holding him up by two limbs with minimal effort while Mercury thrashed and yelled several words that Emerald was pretty sure wouldn’t be listed in her dictionary.

“Okay, Greenie,” said the bell-ringer, radiating exhaustion. “You’ve got my cash, and I’ve got your accomplice. We can trade, yeah? No need to call in security.”

“Don’t do it, Em!” Mercury hollered. “ _Screw_ the orphans!”

“What is _wrong_ with you, kid?” The bell-ringer sounded genuinely concerned. “Guess I understand why they requested a Huntsman for this gig now,” he muttered. “C’mon, Greenie, the little sociopath can be all yours for just the couple hundred lien in that bucket. And if you give it back, you’ll be helping people, kids like you but who aren’t so… lucky.” He let out a chuckle at that. Why, Emerald didn’t know. What she did know was that every kid in Mrs. Copperfield’s claws would be lucky to be anywhere else.

“It shouldn’t be theirs,” Emerald spat. “Let go of my friend!”

“I warned you, Greenie,” the bell-ringer said, taking long steps toward her, and Emerald would have thrown an illusion in his face and run, but he was holding Mercury. If the bell-ringer wanted to, he could hurt him, and Emerald wouldn’t let that happen. “You’re gonna give that money back to the people that deserve it.”

Whatever she wanted, there had always been someone else who _deserved_ it _._ Emerald didn’t move, and she didn’t fight the anger swelling in her chest and pressing up through her throat. She let it all scream out of her.

“ _NOOO!”_ It rattled the windows of the automatic doors, and the bell-ringer took a startled step back, his eyebrows rising in alarm.

Emerald snarled up at him. “Do you know what it’s like, living there? They give all the food to their favorites and let everyone else scratch each other up for the scraps and lock us in closets when we complain, and all your precious money is going to do is let Mrs. Copperfield buy presents for the kids she hates the least!”

The bell-ringer’s eyes had widened, and they were red, a lighter shade than Emerald’s, but not light enough to have spared him from Rex Aurum.

“And you’d _never_ be one of the kids she likes, not with those eyes, not with _my eyes!”_ She was breathing hard, too angry to cry.

The bell-ringer’s hands relaxed, and Mercury fell from them and coiled into a handspring, bouncing up and landing at Emerald’s side. Then the guy sighed and swept the silly red hat off of his head in something like a salute.

“Money’s yours, kid.” He looked Emerald in the eyes, red meeting red, and nodded. “You earned it. Happy Nondescript Winter Holiday.”

He pulled a scroll from his pocket, tapped it, and raised it to his ear. “Tai,” he said, “you called it, they’re bigots.” A pause. “Well, _yeah,_ I’m quitting.” Another pause. “Look, you can gloat later, okay? I’ll see you and the girls at dinner. No, I do _not_ want to talk to the dog.”

Emerald clutched the bucket of money close to her chest and sprinted across the parking lot with Mercury at her side before the bell-ringer could change his mind. When they reached the alley by the bank, Emerald’s skin was still crawling, an awful, burned-out feeling nesting in her lungs. It was like someone had torn open a scab inside of her, a wound she’d thought had healed, bleeding again. She scraped the money out of the barrel and shoved it into her pockets, then threw her pick into the roof and scrambled up.

The second Mercury cleared the roofline after her, she grabbed her pick and took off running again.

“Em, where are we going?” he shouted, breathless.

They’d said she’d never have a home, that she didn’t deserve one. That her parents had been smart to leave her. That she should be grateful that they even gave her the bedroll, that she shouldn't complain that they paired her up with Rex at playtime so that he and his stupid gold-painted sword could keep her from getting strong enough to become a monster.

Emerald couldn’t find enough voice to answer Mercury. She just kept running, hopping rooftops with him following close behind her. Here, up in the air, the Copperfields would never find her, not even if they cared to. Here, she was wind and cloud and weightless, and maybe, maybe, their words wouldn’t catch up to her.

Her feet led her further downtown, and she realized, suddenly, that they were steering her back to her terrace. Back home.

When they reached the rooftop across from her place, Emerald threw her pick so it lodged in the corner of the window she always left open. She passed the end of the hose to Mercury while keeping ahold of it a couple feet ahead of him.

“Home,” she said. “We’re going home. But we’ve gotta swing for it.”

Mercury glanced at the window, then at Emerald. “You made your house in that.”

“Yep,” she said.

Mercury shook his head. “You’re truly crazed.”

“I’m gonna jump now,” she said, because Mercury liked knowing what to expect, “because I’m crazed.”

She leapt and swung them across, and while she definitely kneed Mercury in the face while trying to secure her hold on the line, they managed to scramble up into the terrace without too much difficulty.

It was just as cold inside Emerald’s house as it was outside, and she sat down on her bedroll and shivered against the wall. Why did she still feel so hollow?

Mercury hovered just inside the window, taking in the little bookshelf, the stacked pyramid of protein bars, the pillows she’d banked in a corner to serve as a chair where she could read.

“You can sit there, if you want,” she said, pointing at the little cluster of pillows, and she looked down, then, because it occurred to her that her home was tiny and cold and more than a little strange. To Mercury, who had a real house with heating and a kitchen and a whole backyard all to itself, her terrace must seem pathetic.

But he just nodded and sat down, slouching like there was nothing weird about it.

“Why do you still look like that?” he asked. “We won.”

“Like what?” she grumbled, pulling her knees up to her chest.

“Like someone just ordered you to eat a kitten,” he said.

“It’s stupid,” she muttered.

“Probably,” Mercury said, shrugging. “Say it anyway.”

Emerald bit her lip and didn’t answer. She’d seen him turn mean before when he thought she was weak. What if she told him, and he thought she was stupid for caring? What if it brought that mean version of him back?

“You said something I didn’t understand to that drunk. About your eyes” said Mercury, leaning forward, and there was nothing sharp in his expression. “Was that it?”

Emerald scrunched herself up so she was small. “You mean you don’t know?”

“Out of the kingdoms, out of the loop,” he said.

And keeping it in felt like trying to swallow down poison, so she looked up at him, and she talked.

“There’s this old legend,” she said. “It even shows up in the Silver Knight’s Tale.” She nodded at the book of fairy tales on her shelf. “And the Copperfields believed in it. They—they were from Solitas, and I think the legend stuck around even after the War. They thought that people, kids especially, who have red eyes actually have Grimm eyes. That—that there’s a little bit of that evil inside of them.”

_The door of the closet slamming and locking, leaving her in darkness. No matter how loudly her stomach growled, no matter how much she screamed and clawed at the wood, it would never open._

_She bit him, little beast!_

_So the stories are true._

“That they’ll lie and steal and hurt people if you don’t keep them under control. If you don’t teach them to be humble.”

_Emerald, the books are only for the good children who behave._

_Emerald, if you were a good girl, you wouldn’t have to eat last._

“That’s bullshit!” Mercury burst out. He crossed his arms. “I’m glad we took their money and made their dumb bell-ringer quit.”

“Yeah, but Merc.” Her voice shrank. “Now that I’m _not_ under control… I lie, and I steal, and I hurt people, and what if they were right? And I deserved it? What if—what if they could have fixed me if I’d stayed? I hate them _so much,_ but what if they were right?”

“They’re not,” Mercury said sharply, and when Emerald shrank against the wall, he sat up on his knees and shuffled over to her. “Em, all that proves is that none of those dipsticks has ever seen a real Grimm before.”

“Yeah?” She sat up a little, hope catching in her throat. All the kids at the orphanage had believed what Mrs. Copperfield told them about Emerald, but Mercury… Mercury was smarter than all of them wasn’t he? He’d lived outside the kingdoms, he would know.

“Yeah,” he said. “Grimm eyes are like… they’re not even eyes, just these creepy glows from deep down in their skulls. They’re red, yeah, but they’re also… flat, I guess. You can look in them and tell that they’re not attached to anything alive. And you,” he shook his head, his eyes scanning over her face, “Em, your eyes are shiny. They give away everything you’re thinking, which, by the way, is real convenient for anyone fighting you. But there’s no Grimm there.”

“Really?” Emerald’s voice wasn’t much more than a whisper.

Mercury rolled his eyes and smiled a little. “Really. Besides, if you didn’t lie and steal and hurt people, I wouldn’t have a partner in crime.”

Emerald didn’t expect to lunge forward and throw her arms around him, but it happened anyway. He cared, he really cared, and it wasn’t because he ignored her eyes and her thieving and her tricky Semblance but because he _liked_ those things about her.

Mercury’s arms flew up in her periphery, and he tensed, freezing. His back went stiff against her forearms. Something was wrong. Emerald unlaced her arms and leaned back. Mercury was staring at her, arms still half-raised in alarm, with a shell-shocked look on his face.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—I mean, I won’t do it again.” She crossed her arms over her chest and wedged her hands under them, so she wouldn’t lose control of them again. She knew by now that Mercury didn’t like people reaching for him without asking. She shouldn’t have touched him.

Mercury unfroze a bit and scratched at the back of his head. His face was starting to go pink.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not, uh, upset. But you probably shouldn’t—again.” He glanced around the room like he was searching for a distraction, still looking a little twitchy.

Stretching out an arm, he leaned over and plucked her book of fairy tales off the shelf. “So. This book. We can talk about this book.” He set it in Emerald’s hand.

“We can,” she said hastily, still burning with embarrassment, and opened it to the dog-eared section, The Princess and the Peasant. The colorful greens and pinks of the title page shone bright even after years of wear, and Mercury perked up, scooting around to sit beside her.

“There are books that come with pictures?” There was an awestruck joy in his voice that made him seem more like he really was nine years old.

“Yeah,” said Emerald, “lots. You never had any?” Life outside the kingdoms must have been really different.

Mercury shook his head. “I just learned to read signs, mostly. Never really had time for anything else.”

“Well, this one’s good,” Emerald said. “I’d read it all the time when I was with the Copperfields. It’s about a super-duper poor girl who finds out her mother is actually a queen.” She smiled. “If I didn’t know anything about my mom, then maybe I was a princess in hiding the whole time, and then I’d be able to have everybody who was mean to me beheaded.”

Mercury smirked. “If we’re going by that, then I could be a secret prince and give them the rack for you if your plan doesn’t work out.”

Emerald blinked.

Mercury’s smirk faded into an expression that Emerald couldn’t read. “I… never knew my mom either.”

“Oh,” she said. There was probably something smarter to say, but her brain wouldn’t think of it. She inched a little closer to him, letting her left arm press up against his right, and this time he didn’t tense up. She wasn’t quite sure whether or not she was imagining the quiet pressure of him leaning in closer, but she did know that he was warm, even through the sleeve of his jacket, even in all this frost.

Mercury’s dad was out late for work stuff that day, so he spent a couple extra hours with her, looking at the pictures in her book and making faces every time he saw the cow pillow. She walked him back to the bank, and on the way, she spent a few of her stolen lien on hot chocolate for both of them.

It was the first legitimate purchase she’d made in her life, and the taste of it warmed her all the way to her toes and made her feel like she was glowing.

“Okay,” she said, when they finally reached the bank and were draining the last few drops of cocoa. “I might have caught a _little_ of the Nondescript Winter Holiday Spirit.”

“Have you seen a doctor about that?” Mercury asked, and he barked out a laugh, and so did Emerald, feeling, for once, like someone who belonged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the interest of having a less alarming end note than last chapter, tune in next week to see what the kids get up to in spring and summer!
> 
> As always, I love hearing what you guys think in the comments :) Cheers!


	6. Warm Seasons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mercury carries out an experiment and Emerald deals with the results.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: Marcus is here and making the "Child Abuse" tag very necessary, so Mercury's POV section is gonna be... just sad. And dark. And sad.

Flowers had started to bud in the yard when Emerald asked Mercury to start training her again.

They were in the camping supply aisle of the LargeMart that day, Emerald scanning the shelves for a new cord for her weapon. Mercury decided that his contribution, as usual, would be sniping down every possible purchase Emerald raised until she snapped and bought something.

“So maybe some of this climbing rope? It’s longer than the hose, and easier to knot, plus the red’s fun.” She glanced at Mercury. “It’s fun, right?”

It _was_ fun. It had a nice sort of shine to it. But Mercury wasn’t going to just _tell_ her that.

“Yeah, it’s great,” he said. “If you’re the kind of dork that matches her weapon to her eye color.”

Emerald took one hard look at the steely grey toes of his boots, and then her eyes flicked up to meet his own. “So, we’ll both be that kind of dork, then,” she said, and she slid the big coil of rope into her pack.

“Maybe I should get a second pick sometime,” she said thoughtfully. “Then I could make longer swings without touching the ground.”

“And then get rope burn because you have no gloves,” said Mercury. On another day, he’d be happy to follow her into Nerd Mode, but he’d been weak in training last night, and the stinging of the thin, deep cut Dad’s weapon had left around his right arm wouldn’t let him forget that weakness any time soon.

Emerald shrugged. “So, I’ll get gloves before I get a new pick. It’d be nice to have more than one thing to hit people with.”

Mercury shook his head. “Dual wielding’s not just something you pick up overnight.”

Emerald scoffed and flicked out her pick. “I picked up single wielding overnight.”

Mercury just frowned and look down. That stupid, unearned confidence was the thing about Em that was going to make him lose her. It was the thing that would get her killed someday.

“Look,” she said, “if you’re so bent out of shape about it, why don’t we just give training another shot?”

Mercury’s stomach dropped, and it was all he could do not to run home and leave Emerald far behind.

 _“No,”_ he said. “Em, I am _not_ fighting you again.” He clenched the rail of the cart so hard his knuckles went white to keep his hands from shaking. He’d rather eat his own boots than hurt her again.

These past few months—at least, the fraction of them that he spent with Emerald—had been good, _actually_ good. They’d steal a new candy from the LargeMart each week and then race back to Emerald’s place to share it, hunched over her book of fairy tales. Mercury didn’t go to the headache of actually reading the words, but he could have stared at every picture in the thing for hours.

And now Emerald was asking him to destroy all of it.

“I don’t want you to fight me,” she said, taking a step toward him only for him to flinch back. “But what if you just… showed me a couple of moves, or gave me pointers or something?”

“I—” What would that even look like? Dad just fought him. Fought him and beat him and fought him again until he was strong. There were little moments in the fight, yeah, where he’d tell Mercury exactly why the technique he was using was flawed or why his kick was so easy to anticipate, but they were all blended into the motion of the battle, the words punctuated by a right hook to the jaw or a kick to the ribs.

“I don’t know,” he said. It was all too easy for him to remember the green sparks of her aura flickering out, the glint of fear in her eyes.

Emerald frowned, weighing her pick in her hand. “What if it’s like when I buy stuff? I say something I like, and you shoot it down, and I push back, and we end up with something we both like. Like with the cow pillow.”

“Look, Em,” he said weakly. “You can _not_ list the cow pillow as one of our successes.”

“But we have so many good jokes with it!” she said. “It wields a dark and terrifying power, and so can I if we figure out a way to get this right!”

And it was sentences like that that left Mercury certain that he could never, _ever_ let Emerald get herself killed.

“I—I’ll try it,” he said.

Emerald smiled. “Merc, thank you. Really. Now, c’mon, let’s go scam this past Cypress.”

Mercury smirked. “You like her.”

“I _like_ how much she annoys you.”

“You think she’s _niiiiice._ ”

“Shut up!”

Once they’d finished with the groceries, they hopped rooftops back to the place where they’d first tried to spar. Now, it wasn’t only the place where he’d joined up with Emerald; it was also the place where he’d betrayed her, and the sight of it made his skin crawl.

“Okay,” she said. Was he imagining it, or did she seem a little twitchy, too? “So, I can just… try some moves, and you can tell me how to make them better?”

“I guess,” he said warily.

Emerald slid into a passable stance, her fists closed and doubled up in front of her face. She glanced at him, questioning.

“First things first,” he said, “that’s a real good way to break your thumbs.” Emerald swapped them so that they were on the outside of her fingers instead, and he nodded.

“Throw a punch,” he said, and she cranked her arm back and slammed it forward.

Dad would dodge outside of the swing with ease and twist her arm behind her back while it was exposed.

Mercury shook his head. “Whoever you’re fighting will see what you’re about to do before you can do it. Here.”

He stepped up and stood beside her, mirrored her stance, and snapped his fist forward, drawing it back in just as quickly. Anticipating the counterstrike of an opponent who wasn’t there, he ducked and spun out of the way, keeping his stance compact and his feet light.

“Try it,” he said, and Emerald did, a little slower, her feet tangling a little in a way that would send her crashing to the ground if someone backhanded her.

“Again,” he said, and this time they ran through it together, fists punching in sync, gravel shifting under their feet. “Again.” There was a rhythm to it that was almost soothing.

Every time Emerald made a move that would have earned her a punch to the jaw from Dad, every time that Mercury found himself wincing, they would start over, moving together, and slowly, slowly, Dad had less and less to say.

By the time Mercury needed to head back to the suburbs, Emerald could throw a punch and then retreat without a feedback whine sounding in Mercury’s head.

“It’s a start,” he said. “See you next week?”

Emerald smiled. “Always, dummy!”

The whole run home, something in his chest felt warm.

It wasn’t until training the next day, when Mercury panicked and telegraphed a punch and got his arm twisted so far he screamed, that he realized that a new fracture had opened in his world. It had taken him months to fight back the image of his father that that godsdamned birdbrained kidnapper had planted in his head, to stop half-expecting mercy where he knew he wouldn’t find it. And now, as he made the same mistake Emerald had and paid the price that he knew it was supposed to carry, he couldn’t help but see her, cranking her arm back so far that there was no mistaking her intent, and letting it fly. He couldn’t stop seeing the way nothing bad happened to her after that. The wind had whistled quietly, and Mercury had told her what she’d done wrong, and that had been it.

And she’d improved, without him laying a finger on her.

Maybe he’d go back next week, and it wouldn’t have stuck. Pain made it stick.

So, when they practiced again, he asked her, first thing, to throw a punch. With a glimmer of pride in her eye, Emerald slid into her stance, doubled up her fists with her thumbs on the outside, and snapped off a punch, speedy and perfect.

It had stuck.

But, he thought the next day as he aimed a reverse hook kick at Dad’s nose only to get caught by the ankle and bashed into the ground, it was a simple move. Maybe for advanced stuff, the kind of fighting worthy of an assassin, pain was necessary.

The next week, Emerald swiped a second pick from LargeMart and told him she had a new move she wanted to try out.

That was the thing about Emerald—she invented. And sure, half her ideas were completely harebrained, but some of them were weirdly brilliant. Dad had ensured that Mercury’s fighting style was almost mechanized, always following the move that was least likely to get him decked. Emerald, though, there was no telling what she’d do. One week, she’d want to figure out how to retreat by grappling away on her rope. The next week, she’d want to learn how to fake that retreat and send a pick into her opponent’s face instead.

“I was thinking about that first hit you landed on Piper last year,” she said, twirling her new pick through the air by its rope. “How you jumped down out of the rafters and then flipped away.”

Mercury winced. “Look, I wouldn’t use that as a model. That flip was sloppy and my landing was worse.”

_Dad would have—_

“It worked though, didn’t it?” she wheedled. Em was frustratingly good at wheedling. “Piper couldn’t catch you.”

 _Someone better would’ve._ Dad had, whenever he’d tried it in sparring, and he’d been too nervous to attempt it again. Mercury probably wouldn’t be much better at the combat flip than Emerald.

And _that_ gave him the idea.

If he picked up the combat flip faster in his training than Emerald did in hers, then Dad really was just trying to make him better. But if he didn’t, that meant… he didn’t want to think about what that meant.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s give it a shot. My aura’s high, so if you need to kick off of me for practice, it should be fine.”

“Are you sure?” She looked at him, concerned, like he was the fragile one, the one who needed protecting, and he bristled.

“I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t.” He crossed his arms. “You can’t practice that attack without landing a hit on someone.”

Emerald cast one last wary glance at him before swinging one of her picks up into the metal skeleton of the comm tower and letting the rope coil around a support strut. She swung herself into the air, a little clumsily, and then braced her foot on a spar and launched herself downward, somersaulting in midair as she caught both picks in hand and swung them down at Mercury.

That gleam of fear, the same one that had been there when he’d broken her aura, shone in her eyes, even before he raised his forearms to shield his face. She faltered, and her picks didn’t come within a foot of him. She landed on the ground in a heap at his feet.

“What _was_ that!” Mercury hunched over her. “You hadn’t even messed up yet!”

Emerald looked down, hugging one of her knees, her picks lying forgotten on either side of her.

“I didn’t want to hit you,” she said quietly. She snapped her head up before he could reply, a defiant frown already in place. “I know it’s dumb, and I know it wouldn’t have hurt you, but I won’t do it. You can’t make me.”

Gods, he couldn’t imagine what Dad would do to him if one day he just refused to fight, but his shoulders slumped under a treasonous feeling of relief.

“Then, try it without your picks,” he said. “Just hit my arms with yours, and we’ll focus on the flip.”

Emerald nodded and flipped herself up into the tower before shooting down headfirst. Mercury raised his forearms in front of his face, and Emerald’s slammed against them, her body curling into a ball from the impact, the gravel grating under his feet, and then she sprang away, landing more on her shoulders than her hands and taking an undignified roll through the gravel. She came to a halt laughing breathlessly, and it was the first time that laughter and training had ever coexisted for Mercury.

His experiment had begun.

The next day, when he went to fight Dad in the backyard, he dodged the first few punches and then threw his aura into a jump that carried him up into the branches of the maple tree. As one end of Dad’s weapon whipped up into the leaves after him, Mercury launched himself downward, aiming his feet at Dad’s chin.

The kick connected, and Mercury dared to feel a little stirring of pride as Dad grunted and took half a step backward. Mercury pumped his knees and flipped away, landing unsteadily on his hand, and Dad’s kick landed in the middle of his back before he could even regain his feet.

The bruises, he told himself that night, curled against the wall on his mattress on the floor, were worth it. They’d finally prove that Dad was helping him, even if it hurt. That one day, he really would get strong enough that Dad would be proud of him.

Mercury’s experiment lasted seven weeks.

On a Friday evening halfway through May, Mercury sprang out of the tree, dodged Dad’s weapon, and planted a foot in his throat before vaulting away, flipping twice, and landing perfectly, ready to dodge Dad’s counterstrike.

It would have been a definitive close to the experiment, but the next day Emerald vaulted off the tower, rebounded off of Mercury’s arms, and carried out two neat combat flips before landing in a crouch and snapping off a punch.

They’d mastered the flips in the same amount of time.

Which meant there was no reason for Mercury to spend half his waking hours gritting his teeth and struggling to summon back his aura after a beating. Dad only believed in things that were useful, in clothes that ran too big so that he wouldn’t have to replace them for years, in contacts rather than friends.

If there was no use in hitting Mercury, then why did Dad do it?

The question festered like a burn for the next three days, flaring during his training, making him reckless and stupid. Hitting Dad back suddenly mattered more than dodging or minimizing bruises. Because the bruises weren’t making him stronger, because this kick that struck the air from his lungs and made him double up clutching his ribs was for nothing, because that fist cracking into his jaw was for nothing, nothing, _nothing._

There was no reason for Dad to leave him, gasping and wounded, on the dew-damp grass of the backyard every evening. But it kept happening.

The Something with tendrils and teeth that stayed in Dad’s bedroom closet called Dad away on a mission that Wednesday, and Mercury spent the next three days locked in the house, trying not to lose his mind in the quiet with nothing to think about but the fact that Dad was beating him for nothing. His rendezvous with Emerald slid past, and shame settled on his chest, pressing down like an ironclad boot.

_Always, dummy._

Dad believed in getting rid of things that weren’t useful, right? If Mercury could prove, really prove, that Dad hitting him was useless… the image that Piper had planted in his mind hung there, enticing.

He had to try.

Mercury planned it all down to the minute. Dad would be getting back Sunday night, and he would come home to a perfect house and a perfect son.

Dad had given him a freer hand with the shopping lately, and Mercury had invested in some fancy crunchy bread the weekend before in premature celebration of his successful experiment. Now, he used it to make a couple of sandwiches—fresh tomatoes, nice cheese, some bright green leaves from a plant in the produce aisle that smelled better than anything had any right to smell.

He assembled them a little before sunset and left them on the counter for Dad to find. Then he went back to his room, careful to leave the door wide open, and started doing push-ups as the sun lowered. It was important that Dad see him working to get strong on his own, that Dad see that he was trustworthy.

The front door swung open around the time Mercury hit 80, cheating and using his aura a little bit. Nerves made his whole body feel twitchy, but he couldn’t afford to let his arms shake. He couldn’t afford to go answer the door. Dad needed to discover him, working.

Dad’s footsteps sounded from the hallway, and Mercury’s stomach turned over.

“Eighty-five,” he whispered, because counting kept his brain from running off in a panic. “Eighty-six.”

And then Dad was in the doorway, looking stonily down at him.

“I made dinner,” Mercury said, trying to keep his voice from sounding strained. “It’s on the counter whenever you want it.” He didn’t stop doing push-ups. He wouldn’t until Dad told him he could. Dad liked having the final say.

“You gonna eat?” Dad asked.

Mercury didn’t stop. It could be a test. “If it’s alright with you.”

Dad shrugged and nodded toward the dining room before vanishing from the doorway. It was as much of an invitation as Mercury was likely to get, so he hopped to his feet and followed Dad down the hall, heart in his throat.

Dad made a quiet sound of approval at the sight of the sandwiches, and Mercury smiled. He could make Dad happy. He could. He straightened his face back into neutrality before Dad could turn around and then picked up his own dinner. They sat down across from each other at the table. Dinner almost never happened this way—Mercury was always either busy making his own food or still struggling to crawl back into the house after his training.

Maybe, if he pulled this off, dinner would always be like this—him and Dad at the table together.

It was that thought that let Mercury force the words he’d rehearsed out of his mouth, feeling like he was hearing someone else say them.

“So, I’ve been thinking—” he started. The world felt too quiet, like he was underwater.

“Heh. _You’ve_ been thinking.” Dad shook his head with a chuckle that somehow hurt more than a slap across the face and took a swig from the latest bottle.

Mercury tightened his jaw and kept going. This was his chance to make the vision true, and he wasn’t going to throw it away at the first sign of resistance.

“Yeah. I have.” Now was the tricky part—Dad knew he spent a couple hours after his grocery run getting information from a contact, but Mercury didn’t like the idea of Dad getting too close to Emerald, not even within a sentence. “Part of the deal I worked out with my street-rat contact was that I would give her combat training in exchange for information. And, she ended up learning combat flips at the same time as me. We started practicing at the same time, and we mastered it at the same time, even though nobody hurt her to make the lesson stick. So, I was thinking…”

Dad’s face was unreadable, no matter how hard Mercury looked for any sign of whether or not it was safe to continue. They’d had an old magnifying glass back at the cabin in the mountains, and in summer Mercury would use it to fry ants that got too close to the rations. Under Dad’s gaze, Mercury felt a lot like one of those ants.

He forced himself to keep his tone level, not to give away how much he wanted—how weak he was for wanting—the thing he was about to ask for.

“Maybe, with my training, the part after my aura breaks isn’t useful.” Dad’s brow furrowed, and Mercury forced himself to go on. “I could probably be stronger and train more if I didn’t have to take the time after each session to recover. It could be more efficient.” He was pretty proud that he’d thought to use _efficient._ It was a good word, a word Dad would like. “I could be a better assassin if—”

_If I didn’t spend every night trying to roll to an angle that doesn’t press on a bruise and realizing that that angle doesn’t exist. If I didn’t have to re-make half our dinners because you threw a bottle at my head._

“If we re-thought our methods.” Mercury swallowed.

The silence after that seemed to drag out for eons, the loudest sound the drumbeat of blood in Mercury’s ears. He hoped Dad couldn’t hear it.

Dad was still staring at him, and then that neutral mask cracked, his lip curling, and Mercury didn’t even have time to flinch before the dinner table flipped over and pinned him to the floor like a bug.

The bottle shattered on the boards beside his face.

The house was dark and silent, the moon fully risen in the windows, by the time Mercury managed to shamble back to his room with one hand braced on the wall. There was a knife-like pain every time he breathed in the stinging scent of alcohol. He was pretty sure the edge of the table had cracked one of his ribs.

He staggered over to his mattress and collapsed, wedging himself into a corner with his knees drawn up to his chest so that he wouldn’t have to turn his back on the room. His face felt swollen, puffy and hot, and he ghosted his hands over it, not daring to touch the bruises but doing his utmost to hide the tears coursing down them.

 _“I don’t do this for you,”_ Dad had said. “ _I do this because there’s no other way I can stand to touch something so pathetic. And I’ll do it until you’re strong enough to stop me.”_

Dad had never really cared about making Mercury a better fighter. Mercury would never make him proud. The only reason Dad was beating him was because Dad wanted to beat him, just like he wanted to drink whiskey and kill people. And Dad was a lot stronger than he would ever be.

For the first time, in the secrecy of darkness, Mercury let himself call that cold, slithering feeling in his gut what it was: fear.

* * *

The Saturday after she’d mastered her combat flips, Emerald reached the rendezvous point at one o’clock and waited an hour, but Mercury never showed. Six months ago, that would have sent her into a dizzying panic, convinced he’d gotten tired of her and left her behind, but now all she felt was a quiet disappointment and a twinge of worry not for herself but for Mercury. But under it all was a solid feeling in her chest, the certainty that he would be here if he could be.

Maybe that was trust.

She hung around until three, just in case he showed up late, but there was no sign of him in the plaza or either of the alleys. The growling of her stomach ordered her toward the LargeMart.

Trawling the aisles for food was an easy routine by now, the motions of her hands deft and quick, her ability to operate in people’s blind spots flawless as ever. It was more fun, though, to go bulling through the store with Mercury, knocking over endcaps and laughing and bickering. Everything was fine today, but when he was around, the world had more color.

“ _There’s_ my favorite customer!” Cypress smiled when Emerald reached the counter, and Emerald glowed with the knowledge that she was a _favorite._ “Now, where’s that grouchy friend of yours? I thought I was just starting to grow on him.”

Emerald shrugged, lied easily. “He had to help his dad with chore stuff.” She beamed up at Cypress, her smile only half-faked. “But I still wanted to come by and see you.”

She set a packet of sour straws down on the counter along with a few more of the lien she’d lifted from the Copperfield bell-ringer. She hadn’t spent any of it since the hot cocoa. With her new place all set up and her deal with Mercury keeping her well-fed, she wasn’t really sure what to do with it all.

“Well, isn’t that sweet of you.” Cypress said, scanning the straws. “Now, I’m afraid I have to do the usual check.”

“Of course,” Emerald said, swinging her pack off of her shoulder and opening it for Cypress to look inside. A quick flare of her Semblance ensured that Cypress saw a series of adventure books and a mishmash of school supplies rather than the hoard of apples, bananas, jerky, and granola bars that actually occupied the space.

Cypress smiled, her eyes crinkling. “Good to go, then.” She handed Emerald the sour straws, plus some change.

“You keep it,” Emerald said, accepting the straws and leaving the change. Cypress having some of her money felt right.

_I’m not greedy. I can be good._

Cypress dropped the coins on the counter. “Oh! I nearly forgot!” She patted down the pockets of her apron and withdrew two thin, silky red ribbons.

“My son made it down from Mantle last week, and he trimmed some pillows for me. I wondered if you might like the ribbons he couldn’t make use of.”

Emerald’s eyes widened. The ribbons would probably cost only two lien over in the fabrics section, but the way they twisted in the air, the way they caught the light—they were the prettiest things she’d ever seen. And Cypress had seen them and thought of Emerald.

Cautiously, Emerald extended a hand, palm up. “If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure.” Cypress smiled and lowered the ribbons into Emerald’s hand, where they lay, coiled and gleaming, like tiny dragons.

Emerald closed her hand over them as softly as she could and slid them into her pocket.

“I’ll take good care of them,” she said solemnly.

Cypress covered a smile with a hand. “I’m sure you will. Now, you have a good rest of your day, okay? And tell your friend I say hi.”

“Will do!” said Emerald. Ribbons _and_ an excuse to bug Mercury. This really was a great haul.

And she knew now what to do with the rest of her money. She was a favorite, she had ribbons, and she was going to do something that would make Mrs. Copperfield spit with rage at being proven wrong, something that would make Mercury gape at her like she’d sprouted wings.

She was going to give it all away.

Okay, not all of it. She was going to save some for herself. She was going to give _two thirds_ of it away.

The garden center woodshed where the red-headed Faunus boy lived was only a couple of blocks away, and Emerald rushed toward it, relishing the feeling of the warm spring air slipping past her bare arms.

When she got there, the kid’s neat pyramids of granola bars had been restored. Like Lavender, Carrothead was alive because Emerald’s pick had knocked Piper unconscious.

_I can be good._

At the sound of her footsteps, Carrothead’s fluffy, black-lined fox ears perked up, and he turned with a look of alarm before relaxing at the sight of a kid his age.

Emerald stopped a few feet away from him—she’d be skittish too, if Pie and Piper had successfully kidnapped her—and set a quarter of her giveaway lien on the ground at her feet in a neat stack.

Carrothead eyed the money warily as Emerald backed away from it. “What’s that for?” His voice had a soft lisp.

Emerald shrugged. “Happy very late Nondescript Winter Holiday…” she trailed off, realizing that calling the kid Carrothead to his face might be racist somehow, even if she’d meant it in reference to his hair and not his ears.

“Daily,” he said, taking a cautious step forward.

“Happy very late Nondescript Winter Holiday, Daily!” Emerald finished, and she scampered away. The hesitant joy on Daily’s face made Emerald feel like the Good Queen in the Tale of the Wayward Knave. She didn’t have to be the Grimm hiding under the bed.

She could be liked instead of feared.

Lavender was sitting outside her beehive of shipping crates, and Emerald was scared enough of her knives that she chucked the money down to her from the roofline.

“The hell?” Lavender looked up, shading her eyes with a hand.

“Happy very late Nondescript Winter Holiday, Lavender!” she shouted.

Lavender bared her teeth, the sunlight gleaming on her horns.

“How do you know my name, Green?” Lavender’s voice was hard.

“I’m a good guesser!” Emerald called back and retreated before Lavender could find a way to decide that the money was an insult, like Mercury had when she’d first offered him her hand.

By the time Emerald got back to her terrace, having left money with six of her fellow street kids, she felt like a princess—she had _power,_ and it crackled inside of her like the coating on a sour straw, the novelty of it thrilling. Six lives were easier than they’d been this morning, and it was all her own doing.

She felt considerably less like a princess when she reached the rendezvous point the next Saturday, giddy with excitement to tell Mercury what she’d done, only for him to be gone again.

After an hour of waiting with no sign of Mercury, an ugly little voice crept into her ear.

_There’s only so long, you know, that people can stand to be around you. You’re too greedy. You cling so tight that they can’t breathe._

She’d thought that Mercury had killed that voice for her.

It was harder to drive that hateful little whisper away on her own, but she managed it after a while.

 _I’m Mercury’s partner in crime,_ she told herself. _He said so. He’ll be back when he can._

When she got back to the terrace, though, and looked at the corner where they sat close together while she read fairy tales, a different kind of fear crept through her. If Mercury wasn’t abandoning her, if he still liked her, then something was keeping him from her. He could be hurt, like he had been the last time he’d missed a rendezvous, and she’d have no way of knowing, of helping him.

Emerald owed everything to him, and she was failing to pay it back.

She spent the week lost in the pages of her fairy tale book, concocting increasingly implausible explanations for Mercury’s absence. Maybe his house had been taken over by ogres and he was waiting for the chance to slip out. Maybe he’d fallen through a secret door in his closet and landed in a fairy world and was trying to ask for directions back home.

Maybe he’d left her.

Maybe he was dead.

But then Saturday arrived, and so did Mercury. The second she spotted his messy grey hair in the crowd, all she could feel was relief.

“You’re okay!” she cried out when he reached her, and she scanned him for wounds, for any kind of hitch in his walk or shadow below his eyes, but he was whole and unharmed and _here,_ and it was all she could do not to tackle him in a hug. “I was so worried!”

Mercury didn’t say anything, which was weird because he would usually pick up anything that sounded even vaguely like a compliment and use it as joke ammunition, or at least take offense at the notion that he needed worrying about. Instead, he just… _looked_ at her, a soft, sad expression resting on his sharp face.

“You still came,” he said. “I missed two weeks, but you still…”

“Yeah,” said Emerald. “Of course I did.”

On the walk to the LargeMart, Mercury was still weird and quiet, his eyes vacant. It was like someone had sanded off all the sharp corners of him, and Emerald didn’t like it one bit.

“What kept you away?” she asked.

Mercury started at that, a nervous glint in his eye. “Grounded again.”

Merc’s dad had only grounded him for ten days for picking a fight with armed criminals, so Emerald could only imagine what her friend must have done to make his father keep him from her for a full three weeks.

“What for?”

Mercury shook his head. “It’s too stupid for me to talk about.”

Emerald frowned. Mercury had listened to her about plenty of things she thought were too stupid to talk about. “I won’t think it’s stupid.”

“Look, it was just a dumb argument about my training, okay?” Alright, so the prickly side of Mercury was back. “I said some things I shouldn’t have.”

“Like?”

  
_“Em, just drop it!”_ His shoulders were hunched up to his ears, his chin trying to retreat into the collar of his jacket, and he snarled like a small animal cornered by something bigger.

_You cling too tight, and you drive them away._

Emerald retreated a step, raising her hands in surrender. “Okay. Okay.”

Little by little, Mercury’s shoulders sank back down. “So, uh, betcha didn’t have any fun without me.” His usual smirk was back, but his eyes still had that misty look.

Emerald raised her chin and said, “I gave away nearly all my Nondescript Winter Holiday money so I could feel like a princess.”

Mercury goggled at her, his mouth half-opening. “I _genuinely_ don’t understand how you’re still alive.”

“Oh, and Cypress says hi. I think she missed you.”

Mercury snorted. “Sure she did.”

Emerald made sure Mercury rode in the cart—it was technically her turn, but he seemed tired, and the cart ride automatically went to whoever was having the worst week. Even when she pushed the cart fast, though, even when the world went blurry and bright, Mercury didn’t laugh. When Cypress grinned at him and said how glad she was to see him again, he didn’t even protest, just ducked his head and nodded.

Emerald was starting to get scared. Mercury hadn’t been this weird since the time he’d almost hurt her while they were training, and this time she didn’t know _why._

On the way out of the store, Mercury worried his lip with his teeth, his face twisting into a frown.

“Em,” he said. “I don’t wanna train today. Do you think—” he cut himself off and looked away, like he was about to ask for something shameful—“do you think we could go back to your place, and you could read me one of your dumb stories?”

She tried to fix him with a smile that would tell him that that wasn’t a bad thing to ask for at all. “I think that sounds perfect.”

Much as she enjoyed the feeling of strength, of One-Day-I-Will-Be-Dangerous, that she got from training with Mercury, Emerald liked lazing around and eating candy bars with him even more.

It was warm inside the terrace—she’d have to invest in some curtains soon to keep the place from becoming a total greenhouse—but a breeze slipping in through the window made it pleasant. Emerald took her book from the shelf, and they both settled down on her bedroll, elbows brushing, backs pressed to the wall.

“Which story were we on again?” Emerald asked. “It’s been awhile.”

“Not sure,” said Mercury. “I know we got past the, uh, that two-souled guy. I think we were partway through—”

“The Four Seasons, right!” Emerald flipped to the right page.

Mercury yawned. “No good duels in that one.”

“Shush,” said Emerald, though she secretly agreed. “It’s sweet.”

“Nerd.”

Emerald cleared her throat. “The wizard looked out the window to discover a third young woman…” and while she was still trying to figure out what voice to use for Summer, she felt a soft weight fall onto her shoulder.

“Sorry,” Mercury whispered. His hair tickled Emerald’s neck, the rough fabric of his jacket rubbing against her arm as he leaned his head on her shoulder. “Tired.”

“‘S okay,” she whispered back, because it _was_ okay, more than okay. After weeks of fear that she’d lost him, that he might vanish from her life without so much as a good-bye, having Mercury weighing against her side felt solid and warm and _good._ It felt like proof.

She kept reading even as Mercury’s head grew heavier.

“And Fall, the eldest sister, told him to look on all that he had, and to be grateful for it.”

It was one of the most important lines in the story, and she hazarded a glance at Mercury to see what he thought of it. That glance told her that he hadn’t thought anything of the line at all—his eyes had fallen shut, and his breathing was heavy and slow. In his sleep, he twitched a little, like he was dreaming. He really must have been tired.

To think, this was the same boy who’d glared at her hand the first time she’d stretched it out to him less than a year ago.

Mercury didn’t trust people. He didn’t trust Cypress. He didn’t trust the police. He didn’t trust the labels in the dairy aisle. If the way he’d pitched to his knees in the gravel after he’d broken her aura was anything to go by, he didn’t even trust himself.

But he trusted Emerald.

For a moment, the thought staggered her. She owed him so much! What was he doing, giving her something so precious on top of all that debt? After all, she’d never given him anything in return, except some candy he’d hated. And some candy he’d really liked. And rides in the shopping cart. And the time she’d saved him from Piper’s Semblance. And the Saturdays she spent waiting for him, even when he didn’t show, and— _oh._

She was a good friend, just like Mercury was.

A few days before, Emerald had been flipping through her dictionary in search of the word _foundation_ because she’d seen it on a billboard. On her way to it, she’d stumbled across _fond._

“ _adj._ Having a strong liking, inclination, or affection. _Archaic:_ foolish.”

It even had a noun form: _fondness._ How could a word go from meaning _foolish_ to _liking?_ It made no sense.

It made no sense until Emerald actually felt it welling up in her chest and knew that that word was made to label this sensation, this feeling of “I would steal a piece of the moon for you. No—I would steal the whole damn thing.”

That foolish liking started under her ribs and spread down her arms to her fingertips, just like her aura had when Mercury had shown her how to bring it back (she’d used the feeling of slinging her rucksack over her shoulder for the first time and stalking out of Copperfield in the dead of night, certain that however little she deserved, she deserved more than _this_ ). Fondness was a feeling that liked being shared, that itched and nagged when it was trapped inside you alone.

And maybe that was why Emerald’s hand started from her side, why, even though she knew it was a bad bad _bad_ idea, she let it float up to her shoulder and slide once, gently, through Mercury’s hair.

The second she’d done it, her mind screamed a lot of the words that Mercury had screamed when the bell-ringer had him by the ankle because she knew by now that Mercury _hated_ it when people touched him without permission, and she hadn’t asked, and he wouldn’t have said yes if she had, and now he was going to wake up and realize that he couldn’t trust her, and—

Mercury made a soft little humming noise and smiled in his sleep, and that wasn’t so bad, really. Still, Emerald decided she shouldn’t ever do it again, even if his hair was fluffy and so much softer than it looked, even if she really liked that little hum and smile.

She was never going to make him regret trusting her.

So, she turned back to her favorite story and read it again, and as she was easing the book shut, Mercury woke with a start.

“Sorry Dad I—” his eyes refocused, and he blinked, shaking his head. “Hey, Em.” Another blink. A worried look. His hair was mashed down on one side, and Emerald fought down the urge to fluff it back up.

“I wasn’t out for long, was I?”

“About a half an hour, I think,” Emerald said. _Please don’t know I touched your hair. I’m sorry about it, really._

Mercury nodded. “Good. Good. I think… I think I have time for one more story before I go.” He shuffled, putting an inch of space between himself and Emerald, and ran a hand through his hair, struggling to straighten it out.

“Maybe one with good duels?” Emerald suggested, paging through the book.

“Like you have to ask.” And Mercury’s dumb smirk was back like it had never left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnnnnd the illustrious Let Mercury Sleep Club, of which Emerald is the President, Vice President, and Treasurer, has been founded!
> 
> Next week's chapter is going to be the finale of this arc of the fic (the gremlin children will soon become gremlin tweens), and it ended up clocking in at like 11k words, so I'm thinking of maybe splitting it up into two parts and posting the first on Wednesday and the second on Thursday. If you guys have a preference, feel free to weigh in!
> 
> As always, thanks for reading! :)


	7. Vital, Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emerald and Mercury have a good day for once!

All that summer, Amity Coliseum floated over Vale like a meteor, the crystal at its base refracting the sunlight.

Emerald was constantly staring up at the thing, craning her head back so far that Mercury was sure it would get stuck that way.

“What?” he’d say. “You thinking of stealing it? ‘Cause I hate to break it to you, but that jewel’s a little too big to fit in your pocket.”

“I just… it’s gotta be so cool to be up there. I wish…”

And that _definitely_ wasn’t happening, so Mercury would change the subject as quickly as he could. Watching Emerald wish for things that no twinkly fairy godmother was going to give her… it hurt, in a way it had no right to.

And it reminded him of his own stupid wish that he knew now would never come true.

If he didn’t have Saturday afternoons with Emerald to look forward to, Mercury was pretty sure he’d never have survived that summer. Now that he knew he’d never win, training was unbearable. Some days, he stopped trying to hit back altogether—what was the point? He just dodged and dodged and dodged, trying to delay the inevitable. On others, he fought like something feral, trying and trying and _failing_ to make his father feel some sliver of the pain that followed him even into sleep.

The result was always the same.

He spent months careening between rage and despair, the fear around him smothering. He barely slept, and he bought frozen meals from the LargeMart so he wouldn’t have to bother with cooking.

His life felt like a long nightmare that he only woke from on Saturdays at noon, and then there were people and food and light and stories and _Emerald._ Half the time, being out of the house was such a relief that his exhaustion would get the better of him, and he’d pass out on Emerald’s bedroll while she read in the corner. Outside of the nights he'd spent curled up with Fenri at the cabin, those short, sunlit naps were the best sleep he’d ever gotten in his life.

Emerald was kind of… careful with him now, in a way she hadn’t been before, and he would have taken offense if he didn’t feel so much like he was coming apart at the seams. She let him ride in the cart most weeks, and he couldn’t count the number of times he’d seen a question form in her eyes— _Why are you so quiet these days? Why are you always tired? What_ happened?—only for her to press her mouth into a line and force it down.

He’d given thought, a couple of times, to just taking off his jacket, peeling off his gloves, and letting the old scars and new bruises that ran up his arms speak for themselves. But then she’d try to help him—she’d insist even if he said no, he could see the fierce set of her jaw just thinking about it—and Dad would rip out her Semblance and kill her, easy as breathing.

His scars stayed hidden. And Emerald stayed safe.

“The festival kicks off tonight,” Emerald said, beaming up at the sky again. “They say it’s got food from all over the world.”  
  
“Glutton,” Mercury said, a word he’d stolen out of Em’s dictionary. They were on the rooftop today, training. It was one of the weeks this summer during which he’d felt most like himself, whatever that meant at this point. Emerald was getting quicker and quicker at using her picks to swing through the latticework of metal on the comm tower, her movements twisting and graceful. He hadn’t done anything to teach her that.

That night, he lay awake, watching the moon move across his window, thinking about the weightless way Emerald soared through the air. He wasn’t too beat up tonight. Dad was on a real bender, the kind that left him slurring and useless for a full day afterward.

Mercury scared himself by thinking how much his life would improve if he had the guts to put a kitchen knife through Dad’s throat while he was drunk. Dad was a monster, he knew that now, but what was Mercury without him?

And it was at that moment that he felt a prickling of dread at the back of his neck that could only mean one thing: the Something was on the move.

Mercury sat up and crawled to the end of his mattress, leaning forward to press his ear to the door. The Something was the only thing in Mercury’s world that had power over Dad, and that made him almost as curious about it as he was scared of it.

That snooty Atlesian voice was back again, with a tone of reproach. Mercury opened his door a crack so he could make out the words.

“Frankly, I don’t care how many drinks you’ve had. We need a pair of eyes conducting reconnaissance on that arena tomorrow. This is the last Vale-based Vytal Tournament we’ll have a chance to observe before our plan goes into motion, and I don’t intend to let that go to waste simply because our only Vale operative is a no-account drunk.”

If they’d been meeting in person, Mercury was pretty sure the Atlesian guy would have been dead a good sixteen words ago.

“You don’t tell me what to do, you— _aaagh!”_

Mercury slipped out the door and down the hall as quickly as he could, because Dad had never made a sound like that. He hunched down behind the dining room table to see Dad sitting on the sofa with his back to Mercury. The Something was floating in front of him, and those gum-like tendrils had wrapped around both of his wrists. Another wound around his throat, hovering a pointed tooth directly in front of his eye. Mercury pressed a hand over his mouth to smother a gasp.

“Oh, but I do tell you what to do, Marcus.” The tooth inched closer to Dad’s eye, and though Dad didn’t flinch, Mercury did. “That’s the point of you. If you’re interested in changing that arrangement—” The coil of tendon tightened around Dad’s throat—“then I have no more use for you.”

The coil loosened, and Dad coughed, an ugly, hacking sound. He shook his head. “Had too much… too much drink.”

Mercury could hear the sneer in the Atlesian’s voice. “Well, in that case—” The coil tightened again, and Dad started choking, and what would happen once Mercury was alone in the house with the Something, and if he lost Dad he would never get strong enough, and—

“I’ll do it!” Mercury popped up from behind the kitchen table. “I’ll scout it out.”  
  
Dad’s head jerked toward him, and the Something swiveled to face him. A man’s face, with a black moustache, floated in the Something’s gleaming black surface, and Mercury was suddenly conscious of the fact that he’d landed himself in the middle of something far, far too big for him.

“Oh, and you must be Mercury.” The guy’s smile was slimy, and Mercury didn’t care for it one bit. “I don’t see why you speak about him so degradingly, Marcus. The boy clearly has initiative.”

He frowned. “And those eyes…” Mercury slid back half a step. He didn’t like the intent way the Atlesian was peering into his face, and if there was anything he’d learned from Emerald, it was that grown-ups getting too interested in your eye color led to nothing but trouble.

“…they may be something to monitor, Marcus.”

Dad growled, struggling against the Something’s hold on him. “N’thin’ sp’cial.” He choked out.

The Atlesian went on as if Dad wasn’t there. “Now, Mercury, this is a very big, _important_ job.”

“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m dumb,” Mercury snapped, annoyance overcoming fear for a moment. “I’m ten now.”

The Atlesian laughed, delighted. “I must say, Marcus, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Mercury, what I need you to do is simple. Attend the tournament tomorrow, and search for weak spots in the security—how easy is it to access the arena? What precautions do they have in place at the festival?—things of that nature. Has your father taught you how to do that?”

Mercury nodded. “Yes.”

The Atlesian smiled. “Very good. Now.” Dad’s scroll, lying abandoned on the coffee table, lit up. “I’ve sent you a ticket—no, wait, make that two tickets, since you’ve been _such_ a cooperative young man. Don’t you think he deserves to bring a friend, Marcus? Oh, and a bit of spending money would be just the thing.”

Dad’s face had gone completely red from what Mercury assumed was a mixture of strangulation and rage.

Mercury darted around the couch and grabbed Dad’s scroll, because it wouldn’t be nearly so easy to grab once the Something let go of Dad. He retreated back to the mouth of the hallway.

“I’ll stay right here,” the Atlesian said, his voice pointed, “and make sure your father doesn’t do anything foolish while under the influence. Sleep well, Mercury.”

A tendril shot forward, faster and farther than should have been possible, and halted less than an inch from Mercury’s eye. Mercury forced himself not to flinch. He wished he had his boots on.

“And do try to take this seriously.”

Mercury did not sleep well.

But as the grey light of the early morning sun broke through the window, Mercury realized that, for today at least, he had _won._ Dad owed him, and he’d get to be out of the house all day, and the Something was sort of allied with him against Dad, even if it was only a ploy to piss Dad off. And he had two tickets to the Vytal Festival.

He sat bolt upright. _Emerald._ She’d be over the moon. He yanked on his boots and laced them up in haste before sliding Dad’s scroll into his pocket. Normally, he got no more than three hours with Emerald a week, but if he stayed with her at the festival until it closed today, he’d get fourteen in a single day, at least. It was an embarrassment of riches, and he wasn’t going to waste a second of it.

All summer, he’d been Emerald’s problem, a useless lump of frayed nerves for her to look after, but that snooty Atlesian had offered him the chance to give Emerald something she actually wanted.

He was out the door and running toward downtown before the sun had cleared the horizon.

* * *

Emerald stirred awake sometime between the fourth chunk of gravel hitting her window and a voice that she could have sworn was Mercury’s hollering, _“Em, while we’re still young!”_

“Wha?” she mumbled, rubbing grit out of her eyes. It was morning, a Sunday. Mercury wasn’t here on Sundays, and he wasn’t here for mornings. Emerald rolled back over.

_“Before I wake up your neighbors, you slouch!”_

Emerald sat up, her hair falling loose around her face and tinting the world green. It was really Mercury. No one else could be this annoying this close to sunrise. She crawled over to the window she kept open as an exit and leaned her head out to see Mercury standing on the opposite rooftop, waving a scroll overhead.

“I thought I was gonna have to break your window!” he called out

“What is it?” Her voice was still too muddled by sleep for her to shout.

Mercury started jumping up and down, still waving the scroll. “Vytal tickets!!!”

Emerald blinked, the fog of sleepiness dissolving in excitement, and then let out a little shriek of joy. “I’ll be down in two minutes!”

She retreated back through the window, nearly bonking her head on the frame in her haste. With sleep-numbed fingers, she parted the long green locks of her hair into her usual pigtails. From her bookshelf, she picked up the ribbons Cypress had given her. She’d been saving them for a special occasion.

If anything was a special occasion, this was. The slippery fabric was surprisingly tricky to knot around her hair, but Emerald managed it without exceeding her promised two minutes by too much. A glance in the jagged pane of glass that she’d propped against the wall as a mirror told her that she’d gotten the bows right, that they matched the red in her eyes that she wasn’t so ashamed of anymore.

She slid the last of her Nondescript Winter Holiday lien into her pocket, then coiled her weapon up on her back and grappled across the road to Mercury.

“You said neither of us would ever get to go!” she exclaimed when she reached him. “Liar!” She couldn’t stop smiling.

“I didn’t know!” Mercury said. “My dad got tickets for him and me both without telling me, but then he had to work today, so here I am.” He swept his arms out wide, like he was waving to the whole world.

Emerald pushed down the swell of jealousy and fear that she always felt when Mercury mentioned his dad. She knew she was selfish and stupid for wishing that she could be first in his thoughts the way he was in hers. If she had a parent who loved her, they’d come first, too, only she didn’t have a parent, loving or otherwise. She just had Mercury, and the memory of how lonely and frightening her life had been before he’d fallen into it. And that imbalance, knowing that she was just a fun addition to the edges of his world while her own revolved around him, made her feel awkward and wrong-footed.

Add to that the fact Mercury had never said anything that implied that his dad even knew she existed, and Emerald was forced to conclude that Mercury was hiding her from his dad. That he was ashamed of his thieving, street-rat friend.

“Em? Remnant to Em? You there?” Mercury was tapping a finger against the side of her head, and she swatted his hand away.

Emerald pasted on a smile. Today was just going to belong to the two of them, and she wasn’t going to screw it up by moping. “Yeah! Let’s go.”

The festival grounds spread out across the inland edge of Vale, not far from Beacon Academy, and that flat expanse of grass contained more green than Emerald had ever seen in her life. Early autumn mist was still rising up under the new-gold sunlight when she and Mercury arrived. Most of the vendors were just setting up shop for the day, raising tents and hanging banners.

“Okay, so we’re a little early,” Mercury said, scratching the back of his neck and wearing a nervous smile.

Emerald grinned. “And we’re staying till the last booth closes.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” Mercury crossed his arms and smirked. “Where to first?”

Emerald stood still for a moment, letting the bright colors and unfamiliar sounds wash around her. Then a golden-fried smell wafted through the air, and Emerald smiled, making up her mind.

“We’re going to follow that smell,” she said, “and we’re gonna eat whatever it leads us to.”

“You give the weirdest orders,” Mercury said, but he followed her anyway as she weaved around tentpoles and slipped between booths.

The smell led Emerald to a dark red tent that sold chocolate cookies that had been battered and deep-fried, and they tasted so good that Emerald was forced to consider, at least momentarily, that maybe there _was_ a benevolent god out there.

“I feel like this shouldn’t be allowed,” Mercury said with his mouth full as they walked away from the tent. “Like, I know we regularly commit crimes, but this? This is over the line.”

“And yet it’s one of the only things we’ve bought legally.” Emerald shot him a sidelong glance. “You’re sure we’re not doing any thieving today?”

Mercury shook his head. “I mean, not unless you’re just really in the mood.” With a small, proud smile, he held up the scroll he must have borrowed from his dad. “I’ve got it covered.”

Emerald returned the smile, trying not to think too hard about the anxious, indebted feeling that it stirred up, the way that feeling blended into a fluttering happiness in her stomach that was making it hard for her to ingest the cookies at optimal speed.

“Well, in that case,” she said, “I wanna try at least three more foods before the first match. Ooh! These cookies were from Sanus, right? What if we ate something from each of the other kingdoms?”

“Glutton,” Mercury said, and Emerald rolled her eyes.

“You’re overusing it! It only works once every two weeks!”

“But it keeps applying!”

“I never should have read you my dictionary.”

The first round wouldn’t start until ten o’clock, and it was barely seven when they’d arrived, so despite Mercury’s needling, Emerald was able to complete her gastronomic (now _that_ was a vocabulary word to be proud of) quest with plenty of time to spare.

She was also able to learn that Mercury with a sugar rush was a complete menace to society. They were able to finish the quest in part because he sprinted everywhere so speedily that he blurred at the edges, knocking people out of the way with total abandon and bouncing in place on his toes while they waited for their food.

And by the end of it, Emerald was _full._ The usual grumbling and headache and hollowness that dogged her footsteps was gone, and the whole world looked brighter. She held up the last piece of a roll of rice and seaweed and crab meat that Mercury had bought from a vendor from Anima not far from the shuttles. If she closed one eye and held it in just the right spot, it blotted out the sun and glowed. It was weird, how a thing that small could make the world look so different. It was weird how many corners of that world all met right here in this field—the spiced flatbread of Vacuo and the fried abominations of Sanus and the roast turkey legs of Mantle.

“Do I even wanna know what you’re doing?” Mercury asked—if the grouchy tone of his voice was anything to go by, the sugar rush was quickly turning into a crash.

“You ever think about how much world there is?” she asked, popping the roll into her mouth.

Mercury frowned. “Not really.”

She looked up at the Coliseum floating overhead. If metal and Dust and people from all over the world could all find themselves up in that sky together, then maybe it wasn’t so unthinkable that a hungry little pickpocket from Vale might get to see some of that world someday.

“I don’t either, usually,” said Emerald. “But today I do.”

Mercury just shot her a funny look and shook his head. “We should head for the shuttles now if we want good seats.”

The shuttles—middle-sized, glassed-in airships, not unlike the Beacon ones Emerald sometimes saw scudding through the sky over Vale—were parked at the edge of a cliff where the meadow ended. Already, a few of them were sliding free of the docks and taking off into the air like dragonflies, whirring up to the Coliseum.

Emerald watched them go with an awestruck grin on her face. She was so busy watching other shuttles take off that she barely registered Mercury showing their tickets to the attendant until he grabbed her by the elbow and tugged her into the airship.

The two of them huddled close to the far window as more and more people funneled into the shuttle, filling it to capacity, all of them shuffling and grumbling and pressed together.

Emerald leaned over to Mercury and whispered, “This is the easiest pickpocketing setup I’ve seen in my entire life.”

Mercury snickered. “You’re _so_ gonna get us kicked out.”

“Fine, I—” the shuttle’s engine roared, and Emerald’s stomach jumped as the airship took off into the sky. She spun to face the window and clutched the handrail tight. The earth fell away below her, people turning into ants, tents becoming little splotches of color. The city stretched out to her left, all the landmarks of her life laid out below her like toy miniatures. Forests, vast and unknowable, marched away to her right.

“See?” she whispered. “So much _world.”_

She half-expected Mercury to laugh at her, but he leaned over the rail beside her, his eyes going wide like hers probably had already, and said quietly, “Yeah. I see.”

After a lot of elbowing and scampering and a brief, inexplicable moment that Mercury spent just staring at the security guards around the entrance, the two of them managed to find seats in the lower tier of Amity Arena, close enough to the ring that they wouldn’t have to rely on the replay screens to see what was going on.

The stands filled, little by little, the quiet hubbub of the crowd growing to a roar as the first match of the tournament drew closer. There was a shared excitement crackling through the stadium like an electric current, and Emerald had never before felt so much like she was a part of something _big._ She hopped up onto her knees in her seat, eager to get an even better view of the ring.

One of the giant screens hanging over the arena glowed to life, revealing two men sitting in the commentators’ box—one thin, bespectacled, and green-haired, the other plump and mustachioed and red-coated.

“Good morning, people of Remnant!” the green-haired man called out, and the stadium thundered in answer.

“And welcome to the first round of the thirty-sixth Vytal Festival Tournament!” the older guy boomed.

“I’m Dr. Bartholomew Oobleck.” The first commentator pushed his glasses up his nose.

“And I’m Professor Peter Port!”

“Try saying that five times fast,” Mercury muttered.

“ProfessorPeterPortProfessorPeterPortProfessorPeter—”

“Okay, I get it, you’re smart.”

“Now, I’m sure you’re all eager to watch our first match—Atlas’s Team WHLM versus Team VOLT of Beacon!” Oobleck paused a moment to accommodate the cheering of the crowd. “But first, a few words from Headmaster Ozpin.”

Mercury groaned and flopped back in his seat. _“Boooring!”_

A few of the people sitting around them cast offended looks his way, and Emerald smothered a laugh with her hand.

Emerald had seen Headmaster Ozpin’s face on the news before—the weird tiny glasses, the grey haystack of hair, and she was inclined to agree with Mercury’s assessment as the man stepped up to the microphone in the booth.

“Seventy-two years ago…” Ozpin began.

“Oh Brothers,” Mercury grumbled. “Just get on with it.”

“Our world saw the end of a war that almost resulted in the destruction of our entire civilization, and, perhaps more importantly, the loss of the things that set us apart from the Grimm.”

“What, our ability to wear colors?” Mercury sniped, and even Emerald felt a twinge of indignation at that, her hand straying up to the new ribbons in her hair.

“It’s all too easy, as time sweeps that war deeper and deeper into the past, to forget why it was fought. Emotions are the things that make life worth living, are they not? Joy, compassion, triumph, _love._ But they have a cost, far beyond the fact that negative emotions can draw the Grimm toward us. Our ability to feel means, by definition, that we can be hurt. For every joy, there is sorrow, for every act of compassion, there is one of jealousy, for every triumph, defeat, for love, loss.”

Emerald had seen for herself that that was true. Her respect for Ozpin grew a fraction. She glanced at Mercury. He’d pressed his mouth into a line and was frowning hard. 

“In our world, which often holds far more room for grief than for happiness, emotions can feel like little more than an open wound. And yet, without them—what are we? What creatures live without pleasure or fear or love? Only those of Grimm. Though the Great War between expression and repression ended decades ago, each of us still fights it every day, within ourselves.

“When we live honestly, when we let our true colors show, when we stretch our hands out to others in friendship and love, even knowing we may be rejected, we find that victory anew. And each time we lie, each time we shut ourselves away from the world rather than risk the pain, we suffer that same defeat.

“I am proud to look out at you all see the fruits of that shared victory—in the bravery and skill of our students, in the colors of our clothing, in our names and in the names of our children. Thank you.”

Emerald clapped. Mercury wedged his hands under his arms and drew his knees up to his chest.

“Guy thinks he’s so smart,” Mercury muttered. He was wearing the same mutinous look he had whenever Cypress tried to be nice to him.

“All he said was feelings aren’t bad,” said Emerald. “I don’t see why you’re so grumpy.”

“They get you killed,” he said, “even the nice ones. I mean—I mean, what special kind of idiot goes to war for the right to _feel pain?”_

“Maybe _I_ would!” Emerald snapped. “Maybe I’ve felt lonely and empty before and decided I don't like it! Am I an idiot, Merc?”

“No!” he burst out, offended. “Of course not!”

“But you _just_ said—”

“You’re an exception, okay?”

“But _why?”_ Mercury was so good at hating people that Emerald was never quite sure why she wasn’t lumped in with everyone else.

“I dunno, you—you just _are.”_ He shrugged. “Look, let’s just watch the match, okay?”

“Yeah,” said Emerald cautiously. “Okay.”

The two teams had risen up into the arena, and the location counters were spinning madly.

“An Atlesian team that’s half Faunus,” Mercury said. “That’s new.”

Sure enough, the messy-haired boy on the far side of Team WHLM had a fluffy dog’s tail, and the second teen in line had a pair of pink monkey ears protruding from their bright blue hair. Next to the monkey Faunus stood a white-haired girl with sharp bangs and a cutlass.

“Wait a second,” Emerald said, “is that—”

“Atlas captain Winter Schnee is sure to have Dust aplenty, courtesy of her father in the VIP box” said Port.

It was true—the hilt of the Schnee heiress’s sword glowed with a dust cartridge that probably had enough power to level the abandoned SDC building where Emerald lived. That snow-haired girl probably didn’t even know what hunger felt like. Emerald scowled.

“But will this Snow Queen’s second-year team be able to unseat Beacon’s highest-ranking seniors led by Vivien DuLac? Let’s find out!” Oobleck leaned forward.

Emerald followed his gaze to a tall girl with purple hair that fanned out around her head in a tightly curled halo. Emerald’s hair had flared out like that when she was really little, before it had grown out and bunched up into locks. She wondered what it would take to make it stand up like that again. She also wondered where she could steal a trenchcoat like that. It looked badass.

The terrain settled, a tiered cliff rising up behind the Atlas team, a forested meadow with a lake in the middle of it appearing behind the Vale team. Tall, awesome-coat-having Vivien smiled as she glanced back at her territory. The lion Faunus boy beside her mirrored the expression. He nudged next girl down with his elbow, and she smirked.

Emerald’s fairy tale books sometimes described the princesses as having midnight hair and moonbeam gowns. She’d never really understood the phrase until she set eyes on the girl beside the lion Faunus, her gleaming white robes and jet-colored hair and mischievous upturned nose.

“I hope the Vale team kicks the Schnee’s butt,” said Emerald. All around her, the crowd hummed in agreement, radiating disdain toward the white-haired girl in the center of the ring.

Mercury laughed. “Between her name and her Semblance, she’s probably never had a real fight in her life.”

_“Three…”_

And then Winter Schnee turned, her blue eyes narrowing as she looked upward.

“Winter Schnee seems to be looking to her father for a final—”

_“Two…”_

Winter smirked and, with a flick of her thumb, ejected the Dust cartridge from her sword, letting it drop to the ground.

“What is she—?!”

“ _One…”_

Winter kicked the cartridge back into her team’s territory and slid into a fencing stance.

Mercury’s jaw had dropped. _“Em she just told her dad to go screw himself in front of the entire planet.”_

_“Go!”_

Emerald barely had time to process the unbidden flare of respect that Winter’s rebellion had prompted before the dog Faunus boy pointed at the boy across from him and shouted, _“Stay!”_

The Beacon student, who’d been in the process of nocking a bolt to the string of his crossbow, froze, his movements as slow as if he was trapped in a pool of molasses. With ruthless speed, Winder stabbed her cutlass into the ground, and a pair of white-and-blue Beowulves sprouted from the earth, sprinted around Team WLHM, and flung themselves on the frozen boy.

“Tal!” the moonbeam girl beside him cried. A silver, bladed ring as big around as a hubcap flew from her right hand, trailing a chain that joined it to a matching ring in her left, and sliced through one of the Beowulves, but not before Tal’s aura had dropped to fifty. Another swing of the ring dispatched the second summoned Beowulf.

And then a white, half-sized Nevermore swooped down behind Tal, seized him in its claws, and sped up to the top of the arena before dropping him. He landed hard at the foot of the cliff, silver aura shattering. A buzzer sounded.

“Ouch!” shouted Oobleck. “Not even Harper Taliesin’s A+ on my latest Grimm Studies exam could save him from that knockout by Nevermore!”  
  
“Coasting on Semblances,” Mercury drawled. “Wooooo.”

The crowd seemed to agree with Mercury, and a chorus of _Booooos_ went up from about two thirds of the stadium.

The three remaining members of Team VOLT exchanged a look, and then Vivien flung herself at Winter, longsword flashing, while the ring-wielding girl and the fridge-sized lion Faunus boy retreated into the trees. As they fled, the girl waved her hands, and a pair of silver, glowing rings appeared circling the middle of the lion Faunus boy. Another two rings appeared around the two Faunus on the Atlas team, and the lion Faunus—Owen, the meterboard said his name was—used his momentum to yank the two skinnier players off their feet and drag them into the trees, as if an invisible cord between the rings joined them to him. Owen sped up, and the Atlesians slammed into each other, landing in a heap on the forest floor.

Port laughed. “Marrow Amin and Lux Katt are about to find themselves in a spot of trouble going up against one of our favorite duos, aren’t they, Bart?”

“Lunette Fontaigne and Owen Lionheart are nigh inseparable in classes and deadly as a combat unit, it’s true—”

“Not to mention popular with the ladies.”

  
“—but I wonder how that powerful Semblance of Marrow’s will affect their strategy.”

Though Winter Schnee was a snowstorm of glyphs and the girl at her side—Harriet—sped like lightning, keeping Vivien on the ropes, Emerald couldn’t tear her eyes away from the forest battle and the relentless, coordinated attacks of Owen and Lunette.

Something about them felt _familiar._ Emerald leaned against the barrier in front of her, squinting to get a better look.

Lunette slung one of her rings over to Owen, and he caught it by its bladed edge, fire blazing into existence where the steel met the aura on the palm of his hand. With a cry, she spun and flung him toward the two members of Team WLHM who were struggling to recover their footing. Lux dodged to the side, emerging with their rifle and strange, rectangular sword raised, but Marrow froze, shouting, _“Stay!”_

His Semblance took effect just as Owen’s burning hand locked around his forearm. Marrow let out a cry of alarm as the flames ate at his aura.

“Oof!” Port said. “Owen’s Semblance, Firebrand, turns all damage to his aura directly into flame, which poor Mr. Amin looks to have found out the hard way.”

Lunette leapt onto the back of her frozen partner, sent a bladed ring slashing across Marrow’s face, and then sprang away, chasing down Lux.

It wasn’t so different from the way Emerald had learned to rebound off of Mercury’s forearms, and _that!_ That was why they seemed familiar. Once he unfroze, Owen’s hand-to-hand attacks with clawed gauntlets were strong and speedy like Mercury’s. Lunette swung through the trees and lashed out with a terrible, weightless grace that wanted for herself.

“She’s amazing,” Emerald whispered as Lunette whipped out from behind a tree and planted two white boots in Lux’s face.

Mercury grinned and nudged her with his elbow. “Is she ‘popular’ with you?”

“No!” Emerald snapped. “She’s just…” She winced in sympathy when Lux reeled around and fired a shotgun blast into Lunette’s gut, then cheered when Lunette caught the next bullet with her Semblance, ringing it to the tree so that it looped around and struck Lux in the back.

“Emerald has a cru-ush! Emerald has a cru-ush!” Mercury crowed, and Emerald was too busy staring to contradict him.

Winter summoned a black rune under the Vivien’s feet, trapping her in place, then swept a line of glyphs toward her. Harriet raced down the line so quickly she vanished, landing a punch with her charged gauntlets that dropped Vivien’s aura by over twenty percent. Harriet wheeled around for a second pass, but Vivien was ready this time, and a two-handed swing of her longsword sent the smaller girl sprawling for a moment.

“Backup!” Vivien shouted, and Lunette instantly disengaged from Lux, twisting through the trees and flinging herself down toward Owen, whose entire right arm was now a blaze of fire, courtesy of his ongoing fight with Marrow and genuinely scary-looking Semblance.

Without a word passing between himself and his partner, Owen dealt a punch to Marrow with his flaming hand and flipped away from him. He landed coiled up on his hands, digging his claws into the ground for stability as Lunette arced downward. Her feet landed on his, and they both tensed to spring. With a flare of aura, he kept on flipping, and Lunette was launched high into the air and across the ring, grappling down through the trees to land at her captain’s side.

“Okay,” said Emerald, “We’re learning how to do that.”

Mercury nodded vaguely, his eyes trained on the arena.

With Lunette out of the way, Lux and Marrow combined were able to start taking a serious toll on Owen, but his Semblance was starting to set fire to the trees around them. On the other end of the ring, Winter and Vivien fenced, blades and glyphs and the hard-light Dust on Vivien’s broadsword flashing, while Lunette dodged Harriet’s speed attacks by dipping back into the trees where her opponent couldn’t maneuver. From the trees, she flashed several gestures that Emerald had picked up from the older kids at Copperfield, and Harriet’s attacks grew faster, more reckless.

“Okay,” Mercury admitted, “her tactics are good.”

Harriet charged the treeline at full speed only for Lunette to twist out of the way and activate her Semblance, forming one ring around Harriet and the other around a giant elm, fixing the distance between them. Harriet’s momentum slung her into a dizzying series of loops, and then the rings vanished, and Harriet’s Semblance sent her flashing past her captain and out of the bounds of the ring.

A buzzer sounded.

“Team WLHM suffers its first ringout!” Oobleck cried.

Port chuckled. “Literally. You see? _Ring_ —out? Because Lunette’s Semblance is—”

“I do, Port, but I also see a brawl brewing in that forest.”

Emerald followed Oobleck’s commentary to see that the patch of forest surrounding Owen, Lux, and Marrow had burst into flame. Marrow was waving Lux away, and the monkey Faunus fled the blaze while Marrow and Owen kept hacking away at each other. Both their auras were approaching the red, and Owen was hardly visible amid the fire that Marrow’s saw-bladed boomerang had carved into his aura.

_“Stay!”_ Marrow shouted, and the effort dropped his aura dangerously close to the red. He let fly his boomerang, and it slashed across Owen’s chest, setting off a gout of flame that made Marrow flinch, and Emerald could feel his concentration shatter.

Owen unfroze, slamming a clawed gauntlet into Marrow’s shoulder just as Marrow shifted his boomerang into shotgun form and pulled the trigger. Two buzzers sounded. The fire of Owen’s aura burned out.

Emerald giggled when, without a sign of ill will, Owen smiled at Marrow, shook his hand, and then slung his smaller opponent over his shoulder to carry him out of the burning forest.

“No fight ends like that in real life,” Mercury said darkly, because he was apparently determined to suck the fun out of everything.

“It’s a game, Merc.” Emerald jostled him with her elbow. “Why shouldn’t it be fun?”

Mercury opened his mouth like he was about to reply but then shook his head, thinking better of it. He turned his eyes back to the match, and Emerald followed suit.

The captains were still dueling, Vivien’s strength and Winter’s speed cancelling one another out. Lux emerged from the forest, and, with a practiced folding motion, hitched their flat sword to their shotgun so that the two weapons combined to form a hover scooter.

Mercury snickered and leaned forward. “That’s new.”

The strange, spinning kick attacks that Lux directed toward Lunette seemed to throw her for a loop, slowly chipping away at her aura and forcing her to retreat up the cliff, using her rings to grapple as Lux pursued her.

Down on the ground, Vivien was struggling to hold off both a summoned Gryphon and Winter’s glyph-enhanced speed attacks. As she retreated toward the woods, Winter nodded up at the cliff.

A blinding flash of light obscured the entire arena. When spots stopped swimming across Emerald’s vision, Lunette was lying at the base of the cliff, her aura two-thirds gone, and Lux’s skin was glowing gold. Winter had closed her eyes, escaping the effects of the flash, and knocked Vivien back into the woods. The captain of VOLT leaned against a tree, her aura at fifty percent, blinking to clear her vision.

“And a well-timed deployment of Lux Katt’s blinding Semblance shifts the match in favor of Team WHLM!” said Oobleck. “Is there any chance VOLT can recover in time?”

“Get up,” Emerald found herself whispering. Lunette didn’t move. “Get up.”

Lux glided to the ground on their hoverboard, raising their rifle. “Is it fun having a weapon that’s too boring to be a gun?” they asked, leaning down and firing.

Fast as thought, one of Lunette’s rings blocked the bullet. She sat up and stabbed the other ring into the hollow beneath Lux’s chin.

She grinned. “I wouldn’t know.” _Bang!_ Lux staggered backward, revealing the silver barrel of a tiny pistol embedded in the outer edge of Lunette’s ring.

Emerald was on her feet. Mercury was cackling, “Nerd!”

“Niiiiice!” Lux grinned.

Lunette smiled. “Thanks!” And the two gamely returned to attempting to kill each other.

Winter’s Gryphon summon circled around, swooping toward Lunette. The effort was putting the Schnee’s aura down to seventy.

Just as Lunette landed another two shots on Lux, making a buzzer sound, the Gryphon caught her in its teeth and flung her through the air. She landed heavily, the buzzer probably seconds from going off.

Vivien let out a call and nodded at the ground beside Lunette, then turned and ran into the trees. Winter made to run after her, but one of Lunette’s rings sprouted into existence around her waist, another forming around Lunette herself.

Vivien sped toward the lake, a smile forming on her face. Lunette released her Semblance and let Winter charge her. She didn’t even try to get up, just reached out and took hold of whatever Vivien had nodded at.

When Winter was within six feet of her, Lunette raised her hand, Winter’s forgotten Dust cartridge clutched tightly in her fist.

Winter’s jaw dropped, and then the explosion ripped through the arena, making the forcefield around it flicker blue. Both girls vanished in the smoke. A buzzer sounded.

Vivien reached the lake in the woods and dipped the blade of her sword in the water.

The commentators were babbling with shock, talking over each other in their haste.

Mercury was on his feet too now, letting out a whoop of amazement as he leaned over the railing. “That was insane! This is—!” He made a garbled series of vowel sounds, grinning. Emerald laughed. The times that Mercury forgot how cool he was trying to be and broke down into excitement were few and far between, and Emerald prized them almost as much as she did her terrible cow pillow. For a moment, she forgot the ring, her mind fixed on memorizing that silly, full-faced grin of his.

_“Look!”_ Mercury pointed.

The smoke was clearing slowly to reveal Winter Schnee, her neat bun having fallen into a disarrayed, soot-smeared ponytail, leaning on her sword for support. Her aura sat at only fifteen percent.

Lying in a crater of her own making was Lunette Fontaigne, her right arm blackened with soot up to the elbow and her right ankle twisted at an unfortunate angle. Her dark, waving hair was slightly smoking, and her white outfit had been stained grey.

Winter rushed to her side, and Mercury frowned. “Why is she—?”

“Are you insane?!” Winter exclaimed, loud enough for the audience to hear. A nervous laugh rippled through the crowd. Then, quieter, she added, “Are you all right?”

“An admirable display of sportsmanship from Winter Schnee—” Oobleck began, only to be cut off by the crowd’s laughter when Lunette shouted, “Yes and yes!”

Owen jogged in from the sidelines and scooped up his fallen partner while Winter got back to her feet and marched toward the woods.

The water around Vivien’s sword was glowing an unearthly purple.

“And it comes down to the captains!” Oobleck said. “But with Winter Schnee’s aura approaching the red and Vivien Lagos charging up to use her Semblance, I don’t like WHLM’s chances.”

Port laughed. “Even _with_ that family fortune, I would _not_ want to be Winter Schnee right now.”

“Vivien’s Semblance allows her to strengthen her weapon by bringing it into contact with water, an effect that grows more powerful the longer it remains submerged, and with the time her teammate has bought her, Vivien has likely charged it long enough to slice straight through what little aura Winter has left!”

Winter paused at the edge of the trees, looking up at the commentators’ screen, her mouth briefly opening in—was that fear?—before she continued into the woods.

“Looks like you’re gonna get your wish,” Mercury said, sounding almost disappointed. “The Schnee’s gonna get her ass handed to her.”

“Yeah,” said Emerald, but it was hard to be excited to watch a girl who seemed pretty cool, all things considered, walk straight to certain defeat.

It took Winter nearly a minute to reach the lake, and by then purple flames were licking along the edge of Vivien’s sword as she drew it from the water and took it in a two-handed grip. When Winter emerged from the trees, Vivien said something to her, too quiet for the crowd to hear, and lowered her sword. Offering, maybe, a knockout by submission.

Winter shook her head and set her jaw, sliding into a fencing stance. Vivien nodded, swept her longsword into the air, and cleaved it down.

The crowd gasped.

The sword sheared straight through Winter’s cutlass, slicing it in half from point to hilt. Winter didn’t flinch. Her grip on the half of the sword still attached to the hilt was steady. Her free hand darted out and caught the severed half by the curved fingerguard attached to it. She slid back a step and smiled.

The flames running along Vivien’s sword were dead, used up.

And it was in that moment, as every person in Amity Coliseum rose to their feet as one and shook the walls with cheers for a girl they had been booing only minutes earlier, that Emerald Sustrai knew that she wanted to be a Huntress.

If you fought for people, if you showed you were smart and strong and brave, they’d stop caring what your last name was. They’d stop caring about the red in your eyes.

Emerald was going to be smart and strong and brave. And people would love her.

Winter dodged Vivien’s next strike, then twirled and struck out with her two new swords. Vivien caught both hits before they could land, struggling to adjust to this new style of attack. She aimed a stab at Winter’s gut, but Winter leapt into the air, her boots landing on the flat of the blade for an instant before she kicked out, striking Vivien in the face, and leapt over the taller girl’s shoulder in an arc, scoring two slices across her back and sinking her aura to twenty-five.

“Em, pinch me,” said Mercury, glassy-eyed. “I’m respecting a Schnee.”

Emerald did as he asked, and he yelped.

“Mercury has a cru-ush! Mercury has a cru-ush!” Emerald sing-songed, because it was too good a chance for revenge to pass up.

He smacked her arm away. “Her technique’s just good, okay?”

And it was. Every time it seemed certain that Vivien would slice her through, Winter would slip out of the way, wheeling around to attack from an unexpected angle, chipping away at Vivien’s aura little by little. The clash of steel on steel was drowned out by the roaring of the crowd.

In the end, Winter coiled into a ball, ducking a sweep of Vivien’s blade, and then jabbed her blades upward so that they caught beneath the crossbar of Vivien’s sword. With a kick off of Vivien’s stomach, Winter yanked her opponent’s sword free of her hand and then drove both blades into Vivien’s chest. Violet aura flickered. A buzzer sounded.

Emerald cheered until she was hoarse.

Winter turned and fixed her eyes on the VIP box. Still looking up, she executed a single bow.

“A remarkable victory for Team WHLM and Winter Schnee,” Oobleck was saying. “Proof that what makes a Huntsman is not Dust or wealth but skill and determination.”

_Skill and determination._ Emerald knew she had the second of those things, and she’d get the first, no matter what.

She was going to be somebody.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I ended up breaking this chapter into two parts for ease of editing (because I may have gotten carried away with the Arthurian OCs), so the last third of the chapter will go up tomorrow morning, and the kids will continue to have a good time and commit minor criminal infractions.
> 
> (Also, if you've noticed the guest kudos on this work going kind of wonky, you're not alone. I've contacted the archive staff about it and am waiting to hear back, so hopefully nothing weird will happen to the fic while they're dealing with it.)
> 
> As always, thanks so much for reading! You guys are the best! :)


	8. Vital, Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emerald and Mercury start imagining a future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnnd here's Part Two of the arc finale. Happy reading!

By the time the shuttle docked, leaving her and Mercury back at the fairground, Emerald knew exactly what she was going to buy with the last of her Nondescript Winter Holiday money.

“C’mon!” She tugged at Mercury’s sleeve before taking off into the crowd with him right behind her.

“What are you looking for?” he asked, catching up.

“Winter instantly picking up dual-wielding even though _you_ said it was impossible—”

“Oh, you _have_ to bring that up.”

“I do!” Emerald beamed. “It reminded me of how you said I needed gloves. I bet I can get really good ones here.”

Mercury’s face turned serious. He nodded. “We’re getting you the best gloves.” He pulled out his scroll. “I don’t know how much money I—”

“I wanna buy them myself,” Emerald said, “but thanks.” Mercury was _weird_ today—he hadn’t shot down even one of her suggestions, and though he’d never actually offered to buy her anything as large as a candy bar before today, he was now shouldering multiple meals and trying to buy gloves for her. It was fishy.

“Is something going on?” she asked.

“No.” Mercury frowned. “Why…?”

“Well—you’re buying stuff and not arguing and—” it sounded so silly when she said it aloud—“I dunno. It’s different.”

“Do you want me to argue?” Mercury said. “‘Cause I can argue.” He leaned back his head and cupped his hands around his mouth. _“Colors are dumb!”_

His voice carried far enough that they got about a dozen scandalized looks, and Emerald had to yank him behind a tent before anyone could fuss at them.

“Mercury, I’m serious!” she hissed, letting go of his arm. “You’re being weird!”

“I am not!”

“Are too!”

“Are not!”

“That’s not even the right verb!”

“Fine!” Mercury snapped, and his shoulders slumped. “I just… I know I haven’t been a lot of fun lately, and I haven’t really helped you with anything important, and I just—I owe you a good day, Em.”

Emerald _really_ needed Mercury to stop saying things that made her want to tackle-hug him. She held herself back, barely, even though knowing that he thought about her that much, that he worried about not being enough the same way she did, created a tugging feeling in her chest. She stayed where she was, and she struggled for words.

“You don’t have to—I mean, I think you’re past owing me things.”

Mercury tilted his head to the side with a puzzled look.

“I mean—” and now she understood why Mercury had been so reluctant to tell her why he was being weird, because what if her feelings were stupid? What if he told her so? She looked at the grass between her sandals. “Just you being around is a good day.” She shook her head. “Because, um, you’re my friend. And I don’t think friends have debts like that.”

She kept looking at the ground, waiting for Mercury to say something.

“Em?”

“Yeah?”

“We’re getting you the best gloves.”

True to form, Mercury shot down the first booth Emerald pointed out.

“She’s just selling the crappy wool kind,” he said. “Not worth your time.”

“Merc, you are _wearing_ the crappy wool kind.” Emerald poked at his hand, and his fingers twitched. He pulled his hands in close to his chest, rubbing his palm with his thumb.

“I don’t spend all my time grappling around the city by my hands,” Mercury said, his voice tight. “These are just for punching.” He held a hand up in front of his face. “Besides, I like the color.”

They were just plain black.

Emerald smirked, ready to take a shot at lightening the mood. “‘Cause it absorbs the blood of your enemies?”

Mercury cracked a smile. “Yeah. ‘Cause of that.”

They made their way through the fair, Emerald scanning the faces of the vendors, trying to puzzle out which would be soft enough to offer a discount to a ten-year-old with carefully honed puppy eyes and which would try to swindle said ten-year-old to pocket some extra cash. While she watched the vendors, Mercury watched the wares, searching for faults.

“That one’s not too bad,” he said, nodding to a booth with a midnight blue canopy and a series of leather boots and gloves lining its walls. “What’s the read on the vendor?”

The guy was polishing a vambrace and beaming at it like it was his firstborn child. In it for the craft, not the money.

“He’s perfect,” said Emerald.

Mercury nodded. “Wait here. Lemme check one last thing.” He crossed over to the booth, picked up one of the boots, and, with an air of grave concentration, sniffed it. Emerald almost ate her own hand trying to stifle her laughter.

As if he’d just done something very professional and completely un-weird, Mercury looked up, nodded to himself, and waved her over.

“Do I even wanna know?” Emerald asked as Mercury set the boot back in place.

“You can tell crummy leather by the smell,” he said, lifting the boot again. “This isn’t crummy.”

“Your friend has a good nose,” said the vendor, smiling down at Mercury. “Now, what might you kids be looking for?”

“I need gloves,” said Emerald, setting her weapon on the table by way of explanation. “For grappling.”

The vendor’s face lit up. “Wonderful! You know, most of my customers here don’t arrive with a specific combat goal in mind. May I take some measurements? Though of course you’ll be hitting a growth spurt soon, so they’ll need some stretch, some adjustability functions…” The guy’s cheerful, mile-a-minute babbling reminded Emerald of the bespectacled commentator, Oobleck. He somehow measured around each of her fingers in less than five seconds.

“Is there a color you’d like?” the vendor asked, wrapping a tape measure around her wrist and squinting.

Emerald gave it a moment of thought. Normally, she’d have said green, but her outfit had plenty of that already. Her free hand fidgeted with the ribbon in her hair.

“Red,” she said. “I’d like red.”

“Excellent!” said the vendor. “A good bold color!” He bustled to the back of the tent, gathering materials and muttering to himself.

Mercury leaned in and whispered, “If anyone finally collars you, you’ll be caught _red-handed.”_

“We can’t be friends anymore.”

“Nah.” Mercury reclined against the counter, infinitely smug. “You said it already. You can’t take it back. You think I’m _fun.”_

“Stop it.”

“I brighten your day—”

“Merc, I swear to gods—”

“‘Cause I’m the light of your—ow!”

Emerald had pinched him again. The vendor turned around at Mercury’s yelp, and both of them hurried to compose themselves.

“Everything all right there?” the vendor asked.

“Yep!” they both said hastily.

“If you don’t mind my asking, young lady,” he said, glancing at Emerald, “what makes you want combat gloves? Most children are more interested in my colleague across the lane who builds stuffed Grimm.”

Emerald put as much confidence into her voice as she could. “I’m going to be a Huntress.”

The vendor raised his eyebrows and nodded.

“You are?” Mercury wrinkled his nose. “Since when?”

Emerald raised her chin and crossed her arms. “Since twenty minutes ago.”

“Ugh,” said Mercury, smacking a hand into his forehead. “You know that’s a great way to get yourself killed, right?”

“Merc,” said Emerald, “your _dad’s_ a Huntsman. You spend like sixty percent of your time training to be one!”

Mercury bit his lip and scowled, which Emerald took to mean that she’d scored a point. Still, something nagged at her. Mercury’s disgust with Ozpin’s speech, his horror at her wanting to be a Huntress—

“Why do you even want to be a Huntsman?” Emerald asked. “If you think they’re so dumb?”

Mercury shrugged. “I like fighting. I’m good at it. Might as well get paid.”

Before Emerald could protest that that didn’t seem like a very good reason, the vendor, beaming, slapped a pair of deep red, fingerless gloves down on the counter.

“Give them a try,” he said.

Emerald reached for the gloves slowly, almost scared. She’d never touched something as valuable as they were in her life, especially not with the knowledge that they were _hers._ She picked up the right glove and slid it carefully onto her hand. It was soft, flexible, but it also felt sturdy, so when she clenched her fist she felt like she could send someone flying. Small adjustment straps ran across the back of her hand and each of her fingers, so that the gloves could grow along with her. With growing excitement, she tugged on the second glove and flexed her fingers, feeling the strength and give of the leather.

“They’re perfect,” she said, and she meant it.

The vendor smiled. “And they’re two hundred lien.”

Emerald had to fudge a little and turn some of the tens into twenties with her Semblance, but it was a small enough theft that she walked away into the sunlight with her new cherry-red gloves and not much of a weight on her conscience.

“And your grand career as a Huntress begins with robbing a kindly old man,” Mercury said, smirking.

With a sigh, Emerald shrugged. “Everybody’s gotta start somewhere.”

* * *

When night fell, lanterns ignited across the fair, casting the world in red and green and gold.

Mercury and Emerald had seen three more matches that day, though none were as figuratively or literally explosive as the first, and he’d emerged with a mountain of new attacks to try out, plus a good enough knowledge of the security layout that he’d be able to appease the Something.

None of those things were the reason that today was a good day, though, even though Mercury knew that it was those things that would keep him alive.

What had made it a good day had been the moment Emerald had held up a newly gloved hand next to his own and said, grinning, “We match!” And the moment after that, when he’d gotten to make fun of her for it. And the Vacuan tacos they’d bought for dinner, the spiciness of which they had gravely underestimated, and the frantic laugh Emerald had let out when they realized their mistake, and the south Animan yogurt pudding they’d bought and chugged to make the burning stop.

Now, they were running, like they had the first day they’d met, racing to see who could get from the shuttles to the far edge of the festival grounds the fastest. In the thickening crowd, Emerald had the lead, but Mercury was steadily catching up, never letting the green glow of her hair out of sight. The evening breeze was crisp and cool, and the speed of his sprint was bringing Emerald closer, and nothing in the world was wrong.

Emerald skidded to a halt all of a sudden, and Mercury slammed into her back before he could bring himself to a stop. He stumbled back, putting a step between the two of them, and craned his neck to see what she was gawking at.

“It’s them,” Emerald whispered, pointing.

Team VOLT was meandering down the lane, clustered together and in weirdly good spirits for four people who had suffered a defeat on a global broadcast. Shouldn’t they be ashamed? How could they stand to show their faces in front of strangers who’d seen them fail?

And yet here they were, laughing among themselves, Tal playing a song on some kind of guitar-looking instrument and Lunette riding piggyback on Owen, her right foot encased in a cast.

Mercury shook his head. He’d never get the people of Vale—fighting for color and feelings and all the swirly stuff that didn’t do a damn thing to keep you alive, laughing after they were injured. If anything ever happened to _his_ leg, he’d be in a sour mood for weeks.

And Emerald was staring at the losers like they were the Brothers come down to Remnant again.

“What if we said hi?” she whispered.

Mercury wasn’t sure why that thought filled him with panic, but it did. “Are you crazy? No!”

“C’mon, Merc, they lost.” She turned her best I-Am-a-Sweet-and-Innocent-Child-Who-Is-Not-Holding-Your-Wallet eyes on him. “I’m sure they’ll just be happy to meet people who think they’re cool.”

VOLT was close enough to them now to be in earshot, and Mercury realized there was nothing he could really do to stop her, but the panic wouldn’t leave.

Tal was singing, still, “And though it seemed unwinnable, we needed but a miracle…”

“Man,” said Vivien, “you really should have written some songs for in case we lost.”

Tal strummed more emphatically. “We moveth up, we shall not be deniiiiieeeed!”

“Yeah,” Lunette snickered. “We moveth up and then get dropped on our asses by a Schnevermore.”

“I’m gonna do it,” Emerald said, stepping forward into the path of the Beacon students, and Mercury almost cried out in alarm because _he didn’t want to see her get hurt_.

It was a stupid thought, wasn’t it? Emerald wasn’t in any danger from four do-gooding Huntsman trainees in the middle of a public fair. Except she was, a kind of danger that Mercury was only starting to understand. He’d seen the way she glowed at Cypress like the nosy cashier was a fairy godmother. He’d heard her admit that when those assholes who ran the orphanage had called her a monster, she’d believed them.

Emerald wanted people to like her, and that meant that people could hurt her, in a way that didn’t leave bruises. Dad would say that kind of pain wasn’t real, just a weakness she'd failed to control. Dad would say someone needed to show her what pain really meant. But Dad hadn’t heard the little hitch in her voice when she’d whispered, _“What if they were right?”_

And frankly, Mercury was starting to suspect that Dad might just be a piece of shit.

So he stepped out into the lane after Emerald, fully intent on putting a boot between Lunette Fontaigne’s pretty silver eyes if she so much as looked at Emerald funny.

“Hi!” Emerald chirped, and the four members of VOLT slowed, looking down at her. Mercury stationed himself just behind her right shoulder, his arms crossed and his face set in his best Nobody Try Anything frown.

“I saw your match this morning,” Emerald went on, “and I, uh, just wanted to say you were really amazing!”

Vivien smiled. “Thanks, kid. That means a lot.” She nodded at Lunette’s ankle. “It hasn’t been the most glorious day for Beacon.”

“But that fight!” Emerald exclaimed. “Your sword!” She looked at Owen. “And your fire!” At Lunette. “And your—!” Emerald brought her hands together and then burst them apart, making a _fwoosh_ noise, and Lunette laughed. “I’m gonna be a Huntress, too!”

And it was all Mercury could do not to flinch because _gods,_ did she have to be so obvious? Her total lack of caution made something inside him cringe the same way it did when she telegraphed a punch.

_Grown-ups don’t care what you want, Em._ He’d learned that the hard way, and he hoped she wouldn’t have to learn it that way, too.

Owen chuckled and stooped down to Emerald’s level, making Lunette’s hair fall over his own like he was wearing a bad wig. “That’s great!” He smiled. “But you might not wanna take Loony here as a role model.” He blew a strand of Lunette’s hair out of his face.

“Don’t listen to a word he says,” Lunette said sharply. “I’m brilliant.”

Owen grinned. “You’re a lunatic.”

“Wow, that pun just gets funnier every time you use it,” Lunette drawled before returning her focus to Emerald. “Seriously though, kid, it can be a scary line of work.”

Tal nodded, and Mercury noticed a long, clawlike scar running down from his eye to his neck and vanishing into the collar of his shirt.

“But,” said Lunette, drumming playfully on Owen’s shoulder. “If you’ve got a good partner.” She poked Vivien with her uninjured foot. “And a good team, you can’t go wrong.” It was then that she seemed to notice Mercury, and he kept his frown in place as Lunette did a double-take.

She looked at Emerald. “Whoa. Is he your bodyguard?”

“Yeah,” said Mercury, narrowing his eyes. “I am.”

Lunette huffed out a laugh and turned to Emerald. “He’s got good scowl. Well hired.” She smiled. “Now, we should probably be on our way, and you should probably give Owen his wallet back.”

Emerald smiled sheepishly and pulled the wallet out of her pocket. Owen’s jaw dropped.

“How did you—?” he asked, taking it back.

“She’s good, obviously,” said Lunette. “Just like I was.” She winked at Emerald, who backed out of their way, practically vibrating with excitement.

“Thank you!” Emerald called out. “Bye!”

“Oh!” Tal exclaimed, strumming his lute. “I’ve got it!”

As VOLT walked away, he sang, “Can’t wish away this dismal day, nor bring back what is gone…”

“Our dignity?” Lunette guessed.

Ignoring her, Tal went on, “Let’s waste some beers on yesteryears!” which earned a raucous shout of “Hear, hear!” from Owen.

“But then let’s carry on!”

In a silly, high-pitched voice, Vivien echoed him like a backup singer, and then the four Huntsmen blended back into the crowd.

Emerald was grinning from ear to ear. “That—that could be _us_ someday, Merc!”

“What?” By the time he was twenty, Dad would probably have him killing off inexperienced Huntsmen like VOLT for money, and until today, the idea had kind of appealed to him. It would be good, for once, to be the strong one, the one who dealt out pain without feeling it, especially if he was dealing it out to dumb, arrogant people who were stupid enough to believe they could fix a world that had allowed Marcus Black to exist.

But there would be no Emerald in that version of his life.

“We could go to Beacon, Merc,” Emerald said as they kept walking slowly toward the big lawn at the end of the fairground. “I mean, tell me you can’t see the two of us cleaning up a doubles round in…” she counted on her fingers. “Eight years.”

And the thing was, he _could_ see it. Between the assassin-tier fighting skills he’d probably have at that age and Emerald’s stealth and Semblance, they’d _destroy_.

Except Dad would never let that happen.

“I can see it,” he said anyway, because he still owed her a good day, even if she said he didn’t. Because he couldn’t make himself kill that hopeful little smile on her face.

Oh gods, this was what going soft was, wasn’t it? He was going soft, and Dad would know, and Dad would kill him, and—

“What are you looking at?” Emerald was craning her neck at the tent across the way from them, and Mercury shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said, “just… zoned out a little.”

Emerald nodded with that look of concern in her eyes that she wore whenever he blanked. He’d been blanking a lot lately.

“Sorry,” she said, “I know it’s all a lot of years out, it’s just… I’ve never really thought about what I want to do with my life, and there’s all this _world_ now, and—you heard Lunette. A good partner’s half the battle.”

And gods, he wanted that so badly. He wanted to know that in eight years’ time, he’d be walking under these same lanterns with Emerald.

Maybe, just for today, he could pretend that he would be.

Mercury smiled. “Oh yeah? I’ll have you know that I expect to continue to be paid for my services in candy.”

Emerald clasped a hand to her chest in mock offense. “But of course!”

“And that I still think the color theming is dumb and hokey.”

“Merc, your _name_ is a color,” Emerald said. She paused, frowning. “It is a color, right?”

Mercury raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t already looked it up in your big nerd dictionary? I’m hurt.”

Emerald growled, and if he was going to get himself killed by being friends with her, he might as well be the most obnoxious friend imaginable.

“For someone who adores me so much, you haven’t put in a lot of work.”

Emerald swatted at his arm, and he snickered. “What’s it mean, jerk!”

“You sure you don’t wanna redeem yourself by looking it up?”

Emerald fixed him with a glare, and he sighed, raising his hands in surrender. The truth was, he only knew what it meant because he’d looked it up in a big nerd encyclopedia back at their old house. There had been a lot of things scattered around the cabin—a patchwork blanket, a magnifying glass, a weird little wrought iron statue of a deer—that had carried a strange aura of Not-Dad’s around them, and the encyclopedia was one of them. So was Fenri. So was Mercury’s name.

The tiny little letters in that big glossy book had made his head swim and pound, and it had taken him hours of little stolen minutes while Dad was out of the house to piece together the half-page entry on mercury.

“It’s a metal,” he told Emerald, “about the same color as—” he tugged at the lock of hair that was always falling over his forehead. There’d been a picture in the encyclopedia, silver spheres all gleaming under bright light. “But it’s also a liquid? It’s weird. People used to call it quicksilver.” Now that, he’d really liked. “Because it can sort of roll and flow away when you try to touch it.” He smiled to himself. “It’s speedy.”

Emerald cracked a grin. “Sounds about right.”

“Also, if you spend too much time around it, it drives you crazy and kills you,” he said in a rush.

“Still seems accurate,” Emerald said slyly, but Mercury couldn’t bring himself to laugh.

Dad had known Fenri was Mercury’s favorite thing in the world besides him, and he’d made Mercury put a bullet in her skull. How long could Emerald afford to be around Mercury before Dad decided it was time to destroy her, too?

“No, Em, it’s _really_ dangerous,” he warned. “A lot of people died before they figured it out.”

Emerald stopped in her tracks and stared hard at him, a line forming between her eyebrows. It was the same look she had when she was casing a shop before a theft, weighing the risks.

She nodded once. “You know what, Mercury? I think I’m willing to take my chances.”

Before he could decide what to make of that, a boom sounded from the end of the fairground, and he doubled up his fists, his eyes flitting around for the source of the danger.

Beside him, Emerald was grinning and pointing at the sky. Across the velvety blackness of the night, a blaze of red and silver exploded, raining sparks of color down on the crowd gathered on the lawn. Another firework shot into the sky, this one bursting into purple and green.

It was the most ridiculous thing. Somewhere, deep down the line of history, some weirdo had decided that it would be a good idea to take the same kind of powder that let Dad’s weapon launch a piece of lead fast enough to kill and use it, instead, to put pretty colored flames up in the air. It was so _stupid._ And yet something in Mercury’s chest leapt with each light that shot skyward.

“C’mon!” Emerald cried, grabbing his hand and breaking into a run.

And as he dashed through the evening air, letting Emerald tow him toward the field, the world went slow, the same way it did when Dad was about to hit him hard enough that everything went black, only he wasn’t being wounded right now. Not in the usual way, at least.

He bumped into people and stumbled as he ran. He wasn’t watching the path ahead. His eyes were trained on Emerald’s hand, the way it was curled tight around his own, the red of her gloves standing out bright against the black of his, the sure, steady force of her grip pulling him forward.

There were other kids running for the field too, rushing to see the fireworks, and for a moment, Emerald and Mercury were just two more. Not thieves. Not assassins with secret missions. Just kids, running for the light.

As a burst of gold and red bloomed across the sky, Emerald looked back at him, beaming, and something about the sight struck him in the chest. The gold light caught on her skin and her hair and made them shine. It set off sparks in her eyes, on the ribbons she’d threaded around her pigtails. Joy seemed to radiate from her, spreading up his arm, reaching between his lungs, and he understood now, why someone would go to war for color if color made you feel this alive, why you would fight for pain if it meant you got to keep this dawning feeling under your ribs.

_You are everything good in my world,_ he thought, and there was no un-thinking it after that. It was the strangest feeling, like gravity had shifted and left him toppling sideways across the ground.

When time sped back to normal and he and Emerald sprinted the last few yards to the lawn and came to a halt side-by-side, laughing and out of breath, he wasn’t quite the same person who had started running.

The orbit of his life wasn’t centered on Dad alone anymore. The axis of his world was now a scrawny, too-trusting pickpocket who liked fairy tales more than was good for her.

He should have been terrified. He would be terrified, later, in the small hours of the morning and the lonely blue light of his bedroom.

But for now, in the throng of Huntsmen and vendors and spectators, it felt right. As perfect and absurd as the blazing, short-lived stars that gunpowder sent spilling across the sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the first phase of the murder children's friendship has officially come to a close! I'm gonna miss writing the little gremlins. There's a two-and-a-half year time jump between this arc and the next, so the kids will be twelve next chapter, and they'll have... just, so many problems because being twelve is a complete nightmare even in the best of circumstances. I feel like I used the angst joke in the author's notes too early, because now is when it would actually apply.
> 
> That said, I just want to thank all of you guys for reading so far and for how kind and welcoming you've been, especially in the comments. I wasn't really sure anyone would have any interest in this fic when I started posting, and everybody's responses have meant the world to me. You've made this such a wonderful adventure, and I hope you enjoy where it goes next! :)


	9. Born Guilty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emerald attempts a girls' day out with mixed results, and I want to throw Marcus Black into a pit full of snakes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Arc Two, the home of... uh... a markedly darker tone that's going to entail more warnings in these notes. This arc, more than any of the others, is centered around Mercury's trauma and how it isolates him from Emerald in ways that hurt both of them, and it's going to be some rough terrain to cover. For anyone who needs to nope out of this particular stretch, that is Very Understandable, and I want to assure you that the more familiar balance of the dark stuff with the light will return in Chapter Thirteen. I'll put a recap in the AN of that chapter so that anyone who wants to skip the darkness can jump back in there without missing too much (I, uh, might also be drafting a short and silly multi-chapter fic featuring these two to post simultaneous with this arc to alleviate the darkness some, so the first chapter of that'll hopefully be up later tonight or tomorrow).
> 
> Aside from the darkness (which is greatest in this chapter and the one after it), I'm taking a few more risks with this arc and this chapter in particular that I'm somewhat nervous about, so I hope they pay off but very much understand if they don't.
> 
> cw: Mercury's POV sections this week prominently feature All the unpleasant tags except for Alcoholism, plus a comment from Marcus that is suggestive of gendered violence. Emerald's narration briefly references sexual harrassment and is largely about the awkward and confusing parts of hitting adolescence while being a girl and bi and kind of a disaster.
> 
> So. Here we go.

Mercury was twelve the first time his father killed Emerald in a nightmare.

It was early spring, and Vale was in the middle of a cold snap. The wind howled past the windows in a way that reminded Mercury of the old cabin in the mountains, and he would have enjoyed it had Dad not decided, two weeks back, that blankets were an unnecessary luxury, that an assassin should be able to make do without them.

Mercury was pretty sure, though, that the blanket ban had less to do with his own lack of toughness and way, _way_ more to do with the fact that Dad was a raging asshole.

He was still working on that—calling Dad what he was in the secrecy of his own head. It gave him a flickering feeling of power.

Still, _because_ Dad was a raging asshole, Mercury was curled up with his back to the wall, shivering in the darkness while the wind swept past outside. He’d been lying that way for a good two hours, waiting for Dad’s bedroom door to close and lock.

When it finally did, he pulled his jacket tighter around himself and let Emerald slip free of the corner of his mind that he kept locked up during the parts of his life that belonged to Dad.

He’d learned the hard way that thinking about Emerald during the day was a bad idea. Without realizing it, he’d get a faraway look on his face that made Dad want to deck him even more than usual. Thinking about her yanked his mind out of the present, and he couldn’t afford that if he wanted to stay alive.

But here in the dark, where the table couldn’t flip and the light wouldn’t show his face, he let her fill his thoughts. He let his mind drift back to the summer when he was nine, the afternoons he’d spent sleeping in a puddle of sunlight on Emerald’s bedroll, and he tried to will that sun-warmed feeling into himself, to calm the shivering.

The feeling was hard to summon. He hadn’t fallen asleep at Emerald’s place in years now. It had made Emerald worry about him, and Emerald was capable of being dangerously nosy. If she figured out why he was sullen and tired and flinched when people reached for him too fast, she’d get herself killed trying to make it stop.

He _definitely_ hadn’t done anything as stupid as nodding off with his head on her shoulder.

But that didn’t stop him from smiling to himself when he remembered the time he had, the way she’d felt solid and soft all at once, the relief of dropping the act, of not trying to be strong anymore.

And then there was the nicest thing that had ever happened to him, a thing he wasn’t quite sure had happened at all, but he could have sworn he’d felt Em’s fingers slide through his hair, soft as the wind of Piper’s song, but real.

And he’d see her tomorrow.

That was the thought that let him escape the blanketless cold and slide into sleep.

And then he was running through the forest with Emerald, racing under trees she’d probably never seen before. Her eyes darted everywhere, seeking out flowers, birds, mushrooms, all the things that had been everyday to Mercury before Vale, but with her they seemed brighter, glowing and mysterious like the pictures in her fairy tale book.

Something was wrong. Even though his body kept running without a care in the world, there was a creeping shadow in his mind.

A towering pine tree loomed at the side of the path about twenty yards ahead, and Mercury knew, instinctively, that Dad was standing behind it, waiting. Mercury dug his heels into the dirt, skidding to a halt, chest pounding.

Emerald kept running.

He tried to call out for her to stop, tried to scream, but his voice wouldn’t work, and all that came out was a strained whisper.

Dad stepped out from behind the tree, and Emerald stumbled and fell back in surprise. Dad kept his eyes on Mercury while he drew his weapon in its dual-shotgun form, while he leveled it at Emerald.

Emerald lay there, sprawled out on her elbows, just like she had been when they were nine and Mercury had hit her. Just like last time, it was all Mercury’s fault. With an effort that shook his entire body, he managed to scream her name, just once, before his jaws snapped shut again.

He tried to run to her, but his legs were rooted in place, his arms frozen at his sides. The hammers of the guns clicked, and a horrible force pressed down on Mercury’s chest, and he couldn’t move, he couldn’t _move_ why wouldn’t Emerald move why had he brought her here?

Emerald let out a little gasp of terror.

_Bang!_

Blood the same color as Emerald’s eyes spattered the ground, spreading beneath her and soaking her hair.

Mercury fell back slowly, not even able to cry out as he landed on his back in the mulch, the pressure on his chest building, crushing, like a steel foot bearing down, and his ribs creaked and—

He startled awake to find Dad’s boot planted over his sternum, Dad’s pale eyes staring down at him. There was no time to calm his breathing, to raise his aura.

Dad’s voice was deadly calm. “An assassin doesn’t let an enemy sneak up on him in his sleep.” He pressed his foot down, and a strangled noise came out of Mercury’s throat as Dad crushed the air out of his lungs. “And he especially doesn’t sleep so noisily that someone across the hall can _hear him.”_

Mercury struggled, his fingers prying uselessly at Dad’s boot.

“So you’re going to answer me one question.” He pressed down harder, and there was a splintering feeling in Mercury’s chest that was bad bad _bad._ “Or I’m going to crush your ribcage.

“ _Who._ Is _Em?”_

Mercury’s blood ran cold even as the pressure on his chest let up enough for him to speak. He’d let himself be afraid, and that fear was going to get Emerald killed if he didn’t play every card right here. A large part of him wanted to spit and refuse to tell Dad anything—but that would just prove that Emerald was someone he wanted to protect, and Dad would throw aside all his jobs for a week to hunt her down and kill her. Probably in front of Mercury. And with all his ribs crushed, Mercury wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

Dad slammed his foot down. _“I’m waiting!”_

Mercury cried out, and spots swam across his vision, and more than afraid, he was _angry._ Dad respected anger, and Mercury decided the cards he was going to play.

“She’s my street-rat,” he gritted out. “And she’s been pissing me off lately.”

The foot on his chest eased up, and he raked in air. Dad was looking down at him, studying. Curious.

“You _are_ about that age, aren’t you,” he said.

“What age?” Mercury asked, still gasping.

“The age where girls get… frustrating.”

And Mercury did not like this line of conversation _at all,_ but at least he’d thrown Dad off the real trail, so he nodded. “Yeah.”

Dad tilted his head, thinking. “You’ve had this rat for what? Two years? Three?” His voice sharpened, prodding, his foot resting on Mercury’s chest in constant warning. “She must have taught you almost everything she knows by now.”

Mercury knew to fear that tone. It was the same cool voice in which Dad had said, “There’s no use for a dog in the city,” before handing him a gun.

“Almost,” he said.

“Once you _do_ know everything,” Dad said, “she’ll be a loose end. You know what to do with loose ends.”

“Yes sir,” said Mercury, and he hoped Dad couldn’t hear the frantic pounding of his heart against the sole of his boot.

Dad smirked. “So, if there’s anything _frustrating_ you. Anything you want that she won’t give—” he shrugged—“you have a chance to pay the little rat back for it. You can make sure that the last thing she ever knows is that she’s expendable. If you’ve paid any attention to your training, it shouldn’t be much of a fight.”

And when Mercury realized what Dad was implying, it was all he could do not to throw up.

“And no more night noises. Understood?”  
  
“Understood.”

Dad backed away and shut the door, and Mercury pressed his eyes shut and ground his teeth together and kept himself from screaming.

And here was the most awful thing: he’d been looking at Emerald differently lately. She’d started wearing her hair down, and the way it flew out around her when she leapt between rooftops did horrible things to his stomach. He’d started noticing, when he walked close to her, that she smelled nice, which made no sense whatsoever given her living arrangements. The way her eyes brightened and her voice sped up when she had an idea—it all just killed him. And sometimes, sometimes, when a lock of hair fell in her face while she was talking, he thought about reaching out and tucking it behind her ear. On days when the wind and the cold were harsh enough to cut through his jacket and Emerald’s only sweater, he thought about wrapping his arms around her, about how warm the world would feel if he did.

The noticing, the looking, the horrible stomach-twistings, they’d all felt harmless. Stupid? Yes. Confusing? Yes. Embarrassing? _Gods,_ yes. But dangerous? Only to his pride.

Except now Dad was in there too, smearing his bloody hands across every harmless thought, making them feel grimy and wrong. Everything Dad touched got covered in grime, and Mercury didn’t know why he’d been stupid enough to think that he would be an exception.

But he’d die before he let that filth get anywhere near Emerald. Anyone who so much as laid a finger on her against her will deserved to have that finger broken, and the thought of hurting her in the name of those quiet, warm feelings, letting them turn into more of the stickiness and gore that surrounded the rest of his life, made him want to fold himself in half and retch.

In the dark, he built walls. He had plenty already—what harm could a few more do? No more thinking about touching, he told himself. No more wanting to touch. No more looking.

_Don’t you dare get this muck on her._

By dawn, he knew what he had to do. By noon, he had a plan for how to do it.

He took one of the rolls of bandages he kept in his room, used it to strap a kitchen knife to his arm, rolled his sleeve down over it.

“Wish me luck with the rat,” he said on his way past Dad.

Dad smiled, too many teeth, and Mercury wished he could put the knife between his eyes.

He walked through the door and marched downtown, ready to cut Dad off from Emerald. Permanently.

* * *

“I still don’t see why you had to drag me into this,” Lavender said, a nervous note in her gruff voice as she tapped her foot impatiently on the sidewalk outside of Vale’s biggest mall. “Can’t you just get Wolfboy to help you?”

“I am _not,”_ said Emerald, straightening the folded red bandana that she’d taken to using as a headband, “taking Mercury bra shopping.”

Lavender shrugged. “Why not? It’s not like you and me are best buds. And besides, the security guys wouldn’t be staring at him the whole time.” Lavender glanced up at the dark grey horns that sprouted from her wild blond hair and curved around to her jaw.

“I just—” Emerald hovered outside the doors, hesitating—“it feels like kind of a grown-up thing, and I don’t wanna do it on my own, but Merc’s…”

“Depraved?”

Lavender wasn’t a close enough friend for Emerald to feel comfortable with punching her in the arm, but she seriously considered it.

 _“A boy!”_ she hissed. “And I don’t know why that matters exactly, but it does, so we are going to walk into that big dumb building, and we are both going to get out with the necessary supplies!”

It was frustrating, having nobody to talk to about all this weird growing-up stuff. She’d started making Mercury wait with the cart in the furniture department every other trip to the LargeMart so that she could sneak down to the ominously named “Feminine Health” aisle and yoink a box of pads.

Lavender softened a little at that, and as they walked through the automatic doors, she whispered, “Do you... does it kind of hurt to jump lately?” She crossed her arms awkwardly across her chest in a gesture that Emerald was getting used to performing herself.

And okay, Emerald was never going to have a mom who would stroke her hair and give her calming explanatory books and say that everything happening to her was perfectly normal, so she might as well settle for this.

“Ugh, it’s such a pain!” she groaned. “And like, I grapple! Grappling is my thing, and I don’t like that it hurts.”

At Lavender’s grumble of sympathy, she went on, “And I haven’t had the guts to wear anything but this ugly baggy shirt for months because the dudes, the _grown-up dudes_ at the truck stop where I go shower won’t stop looking at me.”

Emerald found herself hunching in her shoulders, rubbing her hands up her arms. More than the hassle of stealing new kinds of clothes and the cramps that made her want to curl into the fetal position, the thing that bugged Emerald about the new shape that she was growing into was the staring, the feeling of eyes clinging to her skin where they had no business.

Lavender was looking at her, studying. “Green, I would consider it not only an honor but a privilege if you asked me to shank their eyes out.”

And Emerald decided that approaching Lavender’s beehive of crates and asking her if she wanted in on a job had been a good plan. Teaming up with anyone other than Mercury was a little strange, but if she’d made friends once, she could do it again, couldn’t she? Mercury had a dad and a home of his own, so it wouldn’t be wrong for her to have friends besides him, would it?

“Whoa,” said Lavender, looking up at the high glass ceiling, the swarms of people milling through the halls, the vendors set up between the stores. “This place is a _lot.”_

It reminded Emerald, a little bit, of the Vytal Festival fairground, though the harsh white tile and the filtered air put a bit of a damper on the comparison. She did a quick scan of the throng, searching for wallets that would be easy pickings.

She selected a mark, a herd of middle-aged people whose overkill sweaters and gawking faces branded them as tourists from Vacuo.

“Stay by the wall,” Emerald whispered. “I’ll grab us some money.”

Lavender nodded and sank into the shadows by the door while Emerald melted into a gaggle of teenagers who were too busy laughing and showing each other pictures on their scrolls to notice one more addition to their flock. Emerald’s group was bustling forward, catching up to the tourists, and when the two groups collided in a jostling of elbows and a chorus of “Excuse me”s, it was all too easy for her to liberate two of the tourists’ wallets.

Except one of them was keener-eyed than most, a guy with a hawk-like face catching her with a glare as she slid the wallet into her pocket.

“Cerise!” the guy shouted. “That little sneak took your wallet!” And then Emerald’s Semblance had him in its teeth.

“Which sneak?” asked the red-haired woman that Emerald assumed was Cerise, whirling around with wide eyes.

The guy spun, pointing after the illusion of Emerald that was sprinting full-tilt for the exit.

“ _That one!”_

Emerald backed through the screen of teenagers and waved Lavender over as the tourists flocked toward the exit. The two of them were around the corner and out of sight well before the distance broke Emerald’s concentration.

“Hopefully they’ll think I got away clean,” she told Lavender, handing her a wallet. “But we should hurry.”

Lavender shook her head in disbelief. “Man, your Semblance gives me the creeps.”

“Yeah,” said Emerald quietly, surprised by how much that stung. “I get that a lot.”

“Oh, it’s cool as hell,” said Lavender hastily. “Just scary powerful.”

“Thanks,” said Emerald. That was the kind of thing that called for a “Thanks,” right?

 _“Brothers,”_ Lavender swore, opening the wallet and flipping through. “That tourist you robbed was _loaded.”_

“Would you mind saying that louder for the people in the back?” Emerald grumbled, but a check of her own wallet revealed that she really _had_ picked an excellent mark. With the amount of cash in here, they’d be able to get not just underclothes but full outfits, even from one of the good combat stores.

“Sorry,” said Lavender, stashing the wallet in her back pocket. “I just—I don’t think I’ve ever touched that much money before.”

“Me neither,” said Emerald. “Now let’s go spend it!”

Lavender, for someone who always looked about two bad days short of opening someone’s throat with a knife, was surprisingly receptive to all Emerald’s suggestions, and it didn’t take them long to settle on a store that offered combat gear for tweens, probably for kids who were about to enroll at Signal.

Emerald felt a little twinge of nerves at the thought. Mercury hadn’t said anything, but he was a Huntsman’s kid, and Huntsmen’s kids went to Signal. He’d be old enough to go in the fall, and he’d be so good at fighting that there was no way he wouldn’t get popular, and then he’d have new friends who showered on a daily basis and didn’t constantly drag him into legal trouble, and he wouldn’t have any need for Emerald anymore.

“All good, Green?”

Emerald shook herself out of her thoughts. Right. If Merc was going to make new friends, so would she. She pasted on a smile.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

Lavender frowned, skeptical. “You said we should buy our stuff here and then you stared into it like it was the frickin’ Pits of Grimm.”

Emerald shrugged it off. “It’s nothing.”

“Is it the fact ‘Rising Colors’ is a truly cheeseball name for a store?” Lavender asked, nodding up at the neon letters overhead.

“Yeah,” Emerald snickered. “Let’s say it’s that.”

“C’mon, Green,” said Lavender, picking her way into the store. “It’s not like it’s gonna bite.”

Emerald followed her, strangely reassured until Lavender froze in place with a stricken expression.

“What is it?” Emerald asked, her hand straying toward the handle of one of her picks while her eyes scanned the shop for danger, but she didn’t see anything more threatening than a few creepy headless mannequins and a couple of parents that looked like they were swiftly approaching their last nerves.

“There’s just _so much stuff_ , and it’s all so _nice,”_ said Lavender. “How are we supposed to get in and out of here in less than a month?”

Emerald smirked and crossed her arms, trying to summon the attitude that Mercury brought to ever shopping trip he’d ever taken in his life.

“We remember that we’re cooler than every damn thing in this store,” she said. “And that everything we buy would be _so lucky_ for us to buy it.”

“Right,” muttered Lavender, smoothing out her ratty grey shirt. The neck of it was all stretched out and frayed, probably from the strain of getting pulled on over her horns. “Right. We’re cool. Sure.”

“Lavender,” said Emerald, trying to sound encouraging, “you’ve survived the streets for your entire life with nothing but a couple of knives. This place _wishes_ it had your cool.”

Lavender cracked a smile. “Thanks, Green.” And then, in a tone loud enough that it drew the exasperated attention of several sales clerks, she added, “Now let’s get awkward!”

Emerald snickered behind her hand and followed Lavender toward the back of the shop.

The staff at Rising Colors kept the bras hidden in their own little cubicle behind a tactful purple display wall like they were something forbidden, which didn’t help Emerald’s nerves at all. Lavender brushed through the screen first, and Emerald followed more cautiously to find her new ally staring at the bras with the same muddled look of confusion and resentment that Mercury got when confronted with a dairy label that had too many words on it.

“What’s up?” Emerald asked, and Lavender flicked one of the tags hanging from a strap.

“The hell kind of secret code is this?”

Emerald joined her in inspecting the tag, which read “28A.”

“Was ‘small, medium, large’ not a clear enough system for these people?”

“Apparently not,” said Emerald, grabbing a green bra in each of the four smallest sizes available. “Trial and error, then?”

Lavender nodded tiredly and grabbed up a sample of her own in the color of her name. “Trial and error.”

It took a _lot_ of trial and error, and one candidate bra getting completely torn to shreds by Lavender’s horns and discretely hidden in a wastebasket, but Emerald emerged victorious with a soft green one made of the same cozy material as her T-shirt. It felt like an armored hug, and she adored it.

“That wasn’t so scary, was it?” Emerald asked.

Lavender let out a growl that made her seem more wolf than mountain goat and blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Let’s just get to the part that doesn’t suck now, okay?”

Emerald smiled. “Totally.”

And buying outfits was really, genuinely fun. Lavender’s face glowed with delight when she found a sleeveless button-down shirt (“It shows off my arms _and_ doesn’t mess with my horns? What god did I appease?”), and she helped Emerald put together an outfit that used a lot of her trademark red and green without looking too Nondescript Winter Holiday themed.

Her new shirt was olive green and fitted snugly, and she could roll and snap the sleeves down to her wrists or up past her elbows depending on the weather. The shorts she tucked the shirt into had enough pockets to accommodate no less than six swiped wallets, and the tights under them (red, fishnet) matched her gloves perfectly.

The boots were Lavender’s idea.

“Those sandals are literally rotting off of your feet,” she said. “Can’t be great for traction on a wall.”

It was true. Emerald’s old sandals were so worn down that there was only a quarter-inch of rubber left between Emerald’s feet and the bricks, but they were one of her first-ever steals. Ugly and impractical as they were, she was attached to them.

“I dunno,” she said, and she managed to stay indecisive until Lavender thunked down a pair of black leather combat boots and a pair of green wool socks to wear under them.

“Okay,” Emerald admitted. “I might want these.”

Lavender slipped back to the back of the store while Emerald tried the boots on. They felt bouncy and strong and like they’d do a lot more damage than a sandal would if she drove them into somebody’s kneecap. They were perfect.

They reminded her of Mercury, and because she decided that no shopping trip would be truly complete without a _little_ shoplifting, she swiped something small for him from the display by the cash register.

By the time Emerald slammed her bags down on the counter, she felt a lot more like someone who might be going to Beacon in four and a half years. She knew from her illusions that you could change a _lot_ by changing the way people saw the world. How much could she change if she changed the way people saw her?

The cashier didn’t look suspicious for even a second when Emerald handed over the frankly criminal number of lien that her new outfit cost, though he did squint briefly at Lavender, which made Emerald want to bean him with one of her picks.

“Racist earswab,” Lavender grumbled. “You mind if we change in the bathroom before we leave?” She tugged at the collar of her old shirt. “I don’t wanna stay in this thing a second longer than I have to. It itches.”

Emerald nodded. “Of course.”

The nearest bathroom they could find was set at the end of a dimly lit ramp, and it was as dark and squalid as the rest of the mall was gleaming and bright.

“Well, this looks like a great place to get murdered,” Lavender said, ducking into a stall.

“Please,” said Emerald, doing the same and tugging on her tights. “We’re the scariest thing anyone’s gonna meet in here.”

She could almost hear the smirk in Lavender’s voice. “A mind-melter and an armed Faunus. You’ve got a point.”

Emerald changed more slowly than Lavender did—the tights were surprisingly tricky—and when she emerged from the stall, Lavender was leaning against the sinks, studying her nails. She’d tucked that sleeveless shirt into a purple plaid combat skirt that Emerald hadn’t seen her buy, and she looked like the world’s meanest and most surprisingly jacked private schoolgirl.

She was—she was really pretty, in the sharp way that Mercury was really pretty and _when had she started thinking of Mercury as pretty?_

“What is it, Green?” Lavender asked, and Emerald’s face went hot.

“You—” Emerald stammered. “You look like you could kill me.”

_Smooth, Sustrai._

But Lavender just smiled and nudged Emerald with her shoulder as she walked past her to the door. “You look like you could kill me, too.”

Emerald took a moment to look at herself in the mirror, and she did look... taller, somehow. More like someone who needed to be reckoned with. With a small smile, she followed Lavender out the door.

And directly into the circle of mall cops that was waiting for them.

Lavender rolled her eyes and raised her hands in surrender.

“That’s the one!” The hawk-faced guy was back, pointing at Emerald. “That’s the one that robbed my wife!”

_Is it written somewhere that I’m not allowed to have a single good day?_

None of the mall cops had actual guns, but Emerald didn’t find the idea of being tased by several people at once particularly appealing. She activated her aura, could almost feel Lavender doing the same beside her.

“Fine!” she said, stalling for time. “You caught me. Take it.” She flicked the wallet out of her pocket and tossed it at the guy.

Lavender moved to do the same with hers, and while none of the mall cops had so much as batted an eye when Emerald had lowered her hands, one of the guys tensed and raised his taser to fire the second Lavender moved, and Lavender let out a yell of rage and frustration that didn’t sound quite human.

And then Emerald was flying. She and Lavender both were hurtling upward, turning the cops into astonished, gaping specks on the ground. Lavender let out a cackle of triumph and disbelief.

That was when Emerald glanced up to see the glass ceiling of the mall rocketing toward them and realized that they were not so much flying as falling upward. She whipped one of her picks free and flung it end over end at the glass before she and Lavender could slam into it, and the ceiling fractured, but held.

The ceiling was rushing up too fast, Emerald didn’t have time to throw her second pick, but it didn’t matter, because the force of Lavender’s horns ramming into the skylight at high speed was enough to shatter it outright, scattering little pieces of glass that dinged harmlessly against their auras.

They kept falling up into the early spring air, and Emerald began to feel a twinge of concern.

So did Lavender, apparently, because she’d clenched her eyes shut and was whispering, “Switchoffswitchoff switch _off, damnit!”_

With a rising feeling in Emerald’s stomach, Lavender’s newly unlocked Semblance _did_ switch off, and then they were hurtling back down toward the hole they’d just made in the ceiling. Emerald caught Lavender around the waist and threw her pick at the concrete edge of the roof with all the force she could muster, and when it stuck, she tugged, wishing her weapon was retractable.

She pulled with just enough force to yank them clear of the hole in the skylight, and they landed on the intact glass beside it, which started to spiderweb under their feet.

Lavender cursed and broke into a run, and Emerald did the same. Their frantic footsteps only made the cracking faster, and as Emerald’s foot landed on the stone roofline, a cacophony of shattering glass rang out as the whole skylight gave way. She barely succeeded in catching Lavender’s hand and dragging her onto the ledge. From far below them, the fainter chorus of glass splintering against the floor swam upward.

It was that sound that struck home to Emerald the fact that this job had just become far, far bigger than anything she’d ever done.

She stuck one of her picks into the roofline and grappled them both down to the parking lot.

When they landed, she said, breathlessly, “Your Semblance gives me the creeps.”

“Dude, _me too,”_ said Lavender, resting her hands on her knees and catching her breath. She stood up and drew her knives. “We’re in a _lot_ of trouble, aren’t we?”

As if on cue, a herd of security guards burst out of the exit nearest them, only ten yards away. They’d be calling in real cops, too, for tens of thousands of lien in property damage.

“Lavender?” she said, and her voice sounded funny and wobbly.

“Yeah?”

“You think you can make us fall sideways away from these guys? Real fast?”

“Worth a shot,” said Lavender, because the guards were almost on them, and she blinked her eyes shut tight, and then Emerald was tumbling down the face of a parking lot that had just—for her and Lavender, at least—become a sheer cliff.

It was lucky they’d been standing in one of the aisles between cars, or they’d have both been splattered on the first sedan they hit. Emerald cried out as her shoulder hit asphalt and kicked herself away the road and into freefall before the friction could eat up too much of her aura. Beside her, Lavender was doing the same, and then they were falling straight down toward the city far faster than the guards could run. The buildings were vast, stony projections looming out of the cliff face, and Emerald really, _really_ didn’t want to hit them as fast as she and Lavender were going.

“Maybe you should st—” she said as they cleared the edge of the parking lot and barreled through an intersection, missing a minivan by the skin of their teeth.

Except, above them, someone was revving a motorcycle engine. A siren blared. She glanced up to see two actual cops piled onto a single motorbike, racing down the sheer face of the road.

 _Just two…_ She could do it.

“I’ll handle them!” she shouted to Lavender. She had to shout because the wind was screeching in her ears. “Just don’t let us fall into anything!”

Lavender nodded and kicked off the asphalt, lining herself and Emerald up so that they were falling down the sidewalk, which was mercifully deserted for eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning. Emerald narrowed her eyes at the cops, reaching inside their shiny plastic helmets to the minds beneath them, willing them to see two gangly twelve-year-old girls smashing into the pavement by an intersection, stumbling to their feet, and then falling down a sidestreet.

She pushed her concentration as far as it would go, even as her head ached and the cops veered around the corner after her illusion, vanishing from sight. The pain was splitting, but she forced herself to visualize them racing down the new street, the image of herself and Lavender falling, just out of reach.

“We need to stop!” Lavender shouted as a lamppost nearly took her head off. A stray cat sprang out of their way with a yowl of indignation.

“You think?” Emerald snapped, her concentration broken. She hoped she’d bought them enough time. “Do it!”

Lavender squeezed her eyes shut. “Switchoffswitchoff.” They kept falling. _“Switch off!”_ she screamed, and Emerald looked down to see a passenger bus stopping at a red light at the end of the next block. They’d smash right into it if she didn’t come up with something fast.

In desperation, she threw her pick at the jutting handle of a shop door as she flew past.

“Grab me!” she shouted, and Lavender did just as the line went taut and yanked the door open. Emerald’s shoulder screamed in protest, and her gloved hands slid a few inches down the rope, but she held on.

The sound of sirens, which had been growing fainter, began to swell again.

“Climb!” she hissed, and Lavender scrambled up her body, catching her shoulder, bracing a hand on her head, and then shinnying up the rope. The door’s hinges creaked as she stood on it, and she grabbed the rope and pulled while Emerald scrambled up. Four blocks away, over the throbbing in her head, Emerald could make out the glow of the light on the front of the police motorbike.

Lavender grabbed her hand and pulled. The door groaned.

Three blocks.

Emerald heaved herself up onto the door and through, and Lavender’s Semblance suddenly gave way, pitching them onto a carpeted floor.

Two blocks.

Emerald yanked her pick free of the handle and slammed the door shut. Seeing a console of lights to adjust the clearness of the glass, she dragged them all down to the darkest setting.

The sirens grew closer and closer and closer until the whole shop shook with the sound of them. And they kept going, on and on into the distance, their mechanical whoops fading to nothing.

There was a deep laugh from the counter at the back of the shop, and while Emerald struggled to sit up with her headache, Lavender sprang to her feet with her knives drawn.

“Usually when people mess with those lights, they’re here to kill me.” Behind the counter stood a dark-haired man with ridiculous sideburns, quietly smiling. “I’m hoping you’re an exception.”

“Only if you don’t rat us out to the cops,” Lavender growled, brandishing her longknives.

“Don’t worry.” He raised his hands in surrender. “I’m a friend to Faunus who end up on the wrong side of the law.”

“Oh yeah?” Lavender slid into a defensive crouch. “And why’s that?”

The shopkeep shrugged and flexed his right hand, releasing black claws like a puma’s. “Let’s just say I’ve been there.”

Lavender relaxed, sliding her knives back into their holsters on her back, and offered Emerald a hand up. Emerald took it, her head still feeling like it was splitting, and propped herself upright on a bookshelf.

_A bookshelf._

This was a bookshop!

“This is a bookshop!” Emerald exclaimed, because the headache was killing her ability to say anything smart.

“Guess you didn’t have much opportunity to read the sign,” the shopkeep said. “I just finished getting it painted last week. Welcome to Tukson’s Book Trade, home to every book under the sun.”

 _Every_ book. That couldn’t possibly be true, but still—shelves marched across the whole room, paperbacks, hard covers, comics and novels and textbooks. She was struck by a feeling not unlike the one she’d experienced the first time she’d laid eyes on the LargeMart produce aisle.

She loved her old book of fairy tales, of course, but she’d read the whole thing, both to herself and to Mercury, so many times now that all the surprise was worn out of it. There was nothing new to discover in those well-worn, crease-cornered pages. But every book in this shop was a complete unknown, a world waiting to open.

“We’re gonna have to hide out for a while until the cops lose the trail, right?” Emerald cast a hopeful glance at Lavender.

Lavender huffed a laugh. “I think you’ll have plenty of time to geek out, if that’s what you mean.”

“That is very much what I mean.” Emerald was already scanning the shelves with her eyes, trying to figure out where to attack first. She’d never gotten a chance to be in a room with this many books before, and she might never again given the fact that Tukson knew they were criminals, so she had to make the most of her time.

“Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?” Tukson asked, walking around the counter.

Emerald pulled back the hand she’d stretched toward a shelf. “I—I can’t afford anything.”

“Yeah she can,” said Lavender, and she pulled out the stolen wallet that the mall cops hadn’t given her the chance to return. She pressed it into Emerald’s hand.

Emerald startled. “You can’t give me this! After everything you had to—”

“I don’t wanna touch the thing again,” said Lavender gruffly. “Someone might as well get some use out of it. Besides, you did the work to get it.”

Emerald closed her fingers around the wallet and nodded. “I—thank you.”

“Since I’m harboring you,” said Tukson, “it may be helpful for me to know what exactly they’re after you for.”

Emerald pointed a thumb at herself. “Pickpocketing.”

“Having horns,” said Lavender, crossing her arms. “And, uh, then some destruction of property.”

_“After they tried to tase her for no godsdamn reason.”_

“Oh, there was a reason,” Lavender said darkly.

Tukson shook his head, his face twisting in disgust. “Just when I think they can’t get any worse—look, that door is open to both of you whenever you need to hide behind it. Okay?”

“Okay,” they both said, and Emerald found herself smiling because as awful as people could be, they could be good, too.

“Now,” said Tukson, clapping his hands together. “What sort of books are you looking for?”

Emerald left Tukson’s at two p.m. with a copy of _The Countess Fiancé—_ which Tukson assured her, despite the name, was a self-aware and swashbuckling deconstruction of the fairy tale genre—and every intention of dragging Mercury down to the shop next Saturday to show him all the books.

“I’m probably gonna crash at Daily’s for the next couple days,” said Lavender. “You have a place to go till the heat blows over?”

“My house is safe,” said Emerald. “Thanks, again—this was fun. Except for the taser part.”

Lavender’s smile was sunny and calm. “Any time, Green. Have fun with Wolfboy!”

Emerald stuck to the rooftops on her way to the bank, not daring to set foot on the streets. There were definitely days when having livid green hair was more curse than blessing, and today was one of them.

When she reached the alley by the bank, Mercury was already there, sitting on a crate and scowling at the brick wall in front of him, and just from the set of his eyebrows, she could tell he was having one of Those Days. The days where his face was always clouded, when he talked in snaps and grumbles if he talked at all. He hadn’t had one in months now—she hoped it wasn’t because she’d kept him waiting.

“Pssst!” she whispered, and she dropped one of her picks over the side of the building for Mercury to climb. “Up here!”

“You’re late!” he replied, matching her volume. “Why are we whispering?”

“I did bigger crimes than usual, okay?” she said. “Now get up here!”

Mercury shook his head, a little bit of his smirk overtaking that sullen expression, and said, “ _You_ get here late, and _I’m_ the one that has to rush.”

When he reached the roofline, Emerald offered him her hand. He’d started taking it, in the past couple years, holding it sometimes when they ran. It was nice.

He batted her hand out of the way, glaring, and heaved himself over the edge on his own.

No nice today, she guessed, feeling something in her chest sink.

“Whoa, hey,” Mercury shook his head, blinked, and his eyes widened a little. “You’re—you look—” his eyebrows drew up in the middle, and then he squeezed his eyes shut like someone had thrown acid in them and looked away—“fine,” he said bitterly.

Emerald had been so caught up in the thrill of high-speed pursuit and new books that she’d almost forgotten about her new clothes. It then crashed down on her that Mercury’s reaction was not the reaction of someone who thought his friend looked nice.

“Oh gods, I knew I should have brought you like Lavender said,” she fretted. “It’s too Nondescript Winter Holiday-y isn’t it, and—”

“No, Em.” Mercury still wasn’t looking at her, but he was smiling. Kind of a sad smile, but a smile all the same. “You—you really do look fine. Huntress-y. Like, you kind of look like you could kill me?”

And if _that_ wasn’t a very confusing punch in the stomach. Because when Emerald had said that, it had been… was it flirting? Was that what flirting was? When Lavender had said it, she was eighty percent sure it had been flirting, and now _Mercury_ saying it… and Lavender was pretty like Mercury was pretty, and was Mercury pretty? Maybe she should check.

He was crouched on the rooftop in that ugly baggy sweater, and his eyes and his face were sharp, and the sun went silver on his hair, and damnit, yep, he was pretty.

“Thanks,” said Emerald, deciding to file that information away and then throw the file in a paper shredder. He was her best friend. She wasn’t going to take the risk of stirring other factors into the mix. “I _might_ have completely destroyed the roof of the mall in the process of getting it, so I’m, uh, glad it’s good. In related news: I’m probably wanted all over the city for completely destroying the roof of the mall.”

She’d tried to play it off like a joke, but Mercury was staring at her in horror.

“Are you stupid?” he snapped, and Emerald flinched because _stupid_ was a word he’d never called her before. “The only reason you’ve lived this long is that nobody’s noticed you long enough to decide you’re a problem!”

“I didn’t mean for it to happen, I just—”

“Saw something shiny?” His voice was cutting. Emerald’s eyes stung.

He really did think she was stupid.

“Yeah,” she said thickly, looking at the shingles between her new boots. “I did.” Out of her pocket, she pulled the little carved piece of stone in the shape of a wolf that she’d nabbed from the cash register. She tossed it underhand to Mercury and heard it land in his palm.

His voice was softer now. “Em, I shouldn’t have said—”

“Well, you said it,” she said, crossing her arms and staring resolutely downwards. “And you meant it, too.”

“Look, I worry,” he said. “I worry I’ll come back to this bank someday and you won’t be here because something happened to you.”

And on any other day, Emerald would have treasured that sentence, would have held it close and run over its meanings again and again in her head. But today, Mercury had called her stupid.

“Because I’m too stupid to look after myself?” She raised her head, tried to make her voice as hard as his had been.

“Because the world is full of awful people!” he burst out, but then his voice fell. “And some of them are too strong to fight.”

His hands were shaking. They hadn’t done that in a long time. Something was wrong.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, scowling. “It’s fine.”

As she puzzled over why Mercury might be so hung up on the vague concept of “awful people,” a new thought struck her.

“Did your dad have a bounty mission that—”

At the mention of his dad, Mercury’s head snapped up, and his eyes went hard. “It’s fine!”

It didn’t look fine. “But you’re all—”

 _“Fine,”_ he almost growled, and she found herself taking a step backward, remembering, for the first time in nearly a year, that day he’d broken her aura when they were little.

The direct attack wasn’t working. It was time to try a side maneuver.

“While I was, uh, fleeing the scene of my crime,” she said. “I found this really cool bookshop where the owner let us hide until the cops were gone, so, uh, I have a new book for us to start. The title’s a-a little cheesy, but the shopkeep said that there would be good duels after—”

“About that,” said Mercury. “I don’t have time to read with you today. I have something important to do.”

“Right,” said Emerald, and the stinging feeling was back. Of course reading dumb stories with her wasn’t important. “So, I guess I’ll just… go to LargeMart with you then.”

“You, uh, probably shouldn’t go into LargeMart if you’re being tracked by the cops,” said Mercury, and even though there wasn’t any more harshness in his words, they still burned.

_Stupid._

“Right,” she said. “Of course. I’ll just… hit a convenience store later in the evening, so my Semblance can work on everybody there.”

“I’ll tell Cypress hi for you,” he said.

Only getting to see Mercury for a few minutes out of her whole week felt like having half her rations stolen. And fighting with him in those minutes made her feel like the remaining half was poisoned.

“So, see you next week?” she asked, hugging herself.

“Yeah,” said Mercury, like nothing was wrong. Like he wouldn’t miss her.

“Okay,” said Emerald, and her mind was already half locked away in the wintry cold of her terrace when he hopped away over the rooftops.

What had she done wrong?

* * *

The waters of this part of the bay were scummy and stagnant, with pieces of garbage bobbing along on the surface. Vale dumped its trash here, in heaps that spilled into the water, all the ugly things that the nice city people didn’t want to think about.

It wasn’t that much of a surprise, Mercury figured, that he’d end up here eventually.

He'd made Emerald flinch and shrink, and he felt so guilty about it that he’d actually checked out with Cypress voluntarily, just so that he could feel like he was doing something she’d approve of.

Em definitely wouldn’t like what he was about to do in her name, but that was how they worked. Emerald got to like things and not like things and try to be good, whatever that meant, and Mercury did what he had to to make sure she could keep liking things.

He’d almost let himself forget that. In the past year, in the light of the glow that seemed to surround Emerald, he’d let himself think that there was a chance for him, too, that he could someday be a person who was happy and good and spent his afternoons listening to his best friend read adventure stories.

But it was too late for him. Dad’s claws were already sunk deep between his ribs, slicing, infecting, ruining. It was too late.

But it didn’t have to be too late for Emerald.

The mountains of garbage by the bay drew out stray dogs in droves. Emerald had taken him out to pet them last winter, but he hadn’t dared touch them, not after Fenri.

He sat down at the foot of the largest trash pile, fidgeting with the little carved wolf that Emerald had given him, and waited. The wolf was nice, smooth in his hand except for the little twin points of its ears. And it meant that even in all the chaos and shattering stupidity of her almost-foiled robbery, she’d been thinking of him.

He should probably chuck it in the ocean before Dad could find it, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to raise his arm. Instead, he stuck it in the rolled-up cuff of his cargo pants, which were starting to actually fit him.

A dog was starting to make its way toward him. It was boney and gold-brown and smiley-faced, and when it walked, its head was level with Mercury’s as he sat on his knees. Except it wasn’t really walking. It was limping, dragging one of its back legs, which was gnarled and withered. Its eyes were clear, and its ears were floppy, and big as it was, it obviously wasn’t much more than a puppy.

It butted its dumb, trusting head into Mercury’s shoulder, and he reached up, scritched behind its ear. It deserved that much at least.

The dog smelled terrible, its fur matted and flea-stricken, and Mercury told himself that even if it was young, it probably didn’t have that long to live, and even if it did, it would never get out of this garbage heap.

The dog was panting happily as his hands moved down to its grimy shoulders, like it didn’t have any idea what a shitty hand life had dealt it.

“Trust me,” he whispered. “It’s not gonna get better.”

The dog just kept drooling happily onto the knee of his pants.

“I promise I’m not doing this because I want to,” he said, and he shuffled around to the dog’s side, subtly encouraging it to lie down, and it did, because it, like the girl he was trying to save with its life, trusted where it should have feared.

He kept scratching behind its ear with one hand, and, with the other, slid the knife out of his sleeve.

“I hope this doesn’t hurt too much,” he told the dog, and then he drew the knife across its throat, doing his best to make the cut quick and deep. There was a swift spray of blood that spattered his hand and his sleeve, and he flinched at the warmth of it.

The dog jolted in his arms but couldn’t make a sound except for a single thin whine. Its three working limbs shuddered once, twice, and went still. Its eyes were still wide and unafraid. Blood started to pool beneath it, sinking into the fetid sand, and Mercury forced himself to let it go, stroking the crown of its head one last time before he stood up.

He paced the shoreline, then, while the puddle of red around the dog’s upper body slowly expanded, and waited for the blood on his sleeve and his hand to dry enough that Dad would see it as evidence. He buried the knife up to its handle in the sand, and when he pulled it out, enough of the blood had sloughed off that he could put it back in its sleeve without creating too obvious a stain.

He couldn’t have Dad thinking he was sloppy.

When the spots on his hand were the color of rust, and the ones on his sleeve an even darker brown, he walked back to the corpse, his movements mechanical. He hadn’t really had to look at Fenri after he’d shot her. He’d been too busy stumbling into the bullhead, trying to fight back tears.

It felt impossible that he had made that still, tangled corpse out of something that had been alive and smiling and drooling five minutes ago. He couldn’t really have made that slow-cooling puddle of gore, could he? The stench of the garbage pile clogged his throat, and he fought down the urge to throw up.

He was Marcus Black’s son. Of course he’d made that corpse.

On the outskirts of the trash pile, he found a length of rubber tubing and a pair of cinder blocks. They would do.

He walked back to the dog’s stiffening body and heaved its torso off of the ground. He wrapped the middle part of the tubing around the dog’s middle, knotted it tight. Then he tied each end of the tubing to a cinder block. His hands didn’t shake, because he told them not to.

There was a ramshackle dock that probably hadn’t touched a boat in years jutting out into the stony waves, and Mercury hefted the weighted body over his shoulder and walked toward it. The boards creaked under his feet as he stepped onto them, but he pressed forward, all the way to the end of the dock, until his field of vision was nothing but a flicker of the dog’s tail and the rolling grey of seawater.

“This wasn’t for nothing.” Whether he was saying it to himself, or the dog, or Emerald, he wasn’t sure. It was the closest thing to a eulogy the dog was going to get, and he flipped it over his shoulder, letting the water swallow it up with a splash that wasn’t as loud as it should have been.

He knelt and dipped his right hand in the saltwater, scrubbed a little to get the most obvious stains off. The splatter pattern on his sleeve, invisible to the cops, would be all the proof Dad needed.

When only a couple rusty dots of blood remained on his hand, he stood up, wiped it dry on his pants, and walked home.

Dad was waiting for him at the kitchen table, tightening the screws in his weapon’s trigger mechanism.

“Your rat?” he said, without looking up.

“I have everything I need from her,” Mercury said, walking past him to the kitchen.

_Calm. Calm calm calm._

“And she wasn’t interested in giving me what I wanted.” He pulled the blood-smeared knife from his sleeve and pumped a glob of dish soap onto it while Dad watched. He cleaned it under the hot water until it shone, then slid it back into the drawer.

A smile was tugging at the corners of Dad’s mouth. His eyes strayed to Mercury’s sleeve, seeking out the miniscule droplets of blood that told of a quickly slit throat.

“And where is she now?”

“Probably in a fish’s stomach somewhere,” said Mercury, shrugging. “I didn’t really stick around once she sank.”

Dad’s teeth shone. “Then you’re ready.”

“For what?” he asked. Calm calm calm. He’d saved Emerald. That was what mattered. He didn’t need to feel this horrible flicker of anticipation. Emerald was safe, and what happened now didn’t matter.

“For a mission,” said Dad, and over the drumming in his chest and the too-clear memory of blood spattering his hands, Mercury told himself that it was fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to thank you guys again for having endured both my extremely long AN and that dog scene which I am pretty sure is the saddest thing I've ever written. You're the best, and I love hearing what you think <3
> 
> (Also, I went back and changed the chapter titles on this arc to "This Life Is Mine" lyrics because they don't accidentally rhyme as much and because It's What Mercury Deserves.)


	10. Desperate for Changes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emerald and Mercury are straight-up not having a good time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: Emerald's first POV section will be dealing with sexual harassment, and in Mercury's first POV section, that "Violence" warning is going to become relevant.

The fluorescents in the convenience store put out a sickly, greenish light that stuttered every few seconds. The electric hum in the air buzzed into Emerald’s ears and made her head ache like she’d overused her Semblance.

It was a few minutes before midnight, the shop’s closing time, and she was slipping a bag of dried apple slices into her pack, well out of sight of the elderly cashier. There was one other person in the store, a guy in his thirties by the energy drinks who kept casting glances her way.

Her stomach growled. She’d put off shopping as long as she could, rationed her bars and eaten them slowly until she only had three left. But it had been nearly five days now since she’d skipped her trip to the LargeMart, so she’d forced herself out into the night and the traffic and the fear of arrest and the fear of other things she wasn’t quite ready to name, a fear that the continual glancing of the guy by the energy drinks was stirring up.

She wished Merc was here. He’d scowl at everyone who looked at her funny and kick them in the shins if they got too close, only he wasn’t here. He was off doing “important” things and being angry with her and tired of her, and could she even blame him with the mess she’d made and the cops sniffing around the city?

The guy by the energy drinks was moseying toward Emerald’s aisle. She had less than half as much food as she’d meant to get.

 _I can take care of myself,_ she thought. This creep wasn’t going to scare her out of half a week’s worth of meals.

She activated her Semblance as he turned into her aisle, so he’d just see her staring at the snack foods rather than frantically shoving them into her backpack. She could reach a hand into his brain. She had nothing to fear from him.

 _The world is full of awful people!_ Mercury’s voice reminded her as the guy prowled closer. _And some of them are too strong to fight._

She finished rebuckling her pack just as the guy sidled up and leaned against the shelf beside her.

“Having trouble making up your mind, sweetie?” he said to the motionless illusion he saw in her place.

Emerald cringed away, backing up a step and letting the illusion do the same before fading.

“No. I just decided I’m going to leave,” she said. She took another step back, and the guy took a step forward, staying just as close as he’d been before.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he said, the faked concern in his voice nauseating. “It’s getting awful late.” His eyes fixed on Emerald in a way that made her feel pinned down, and she hugged herself, backing away while he advanced another step.

“It’s not safe for a little thing like you.”

And she wanted to say, _“Not with creeps like you around,”_ but the words were frozen in her throat.

“How about I give you a ride home?”

And then his hand was reaching for her arm, and she snapped into motion, slipping back out of his reach. She felt small and scared and crawled over, and she wished Mercury was here, and that gave her the idea.

She activated her Semblance before the creep could recover, seizing his mind and showing him what she wished would happen.

An illusion of Mercury slid out from behind the aisle’s endcap while Emerald kept backing steadily toward the door, a hand on her weapon.

His jaw was set, and his voice was hard. “Why are you talking to my friend, creep?”

The creep spluttered in confusion, his face indignant, and Emerald let the fake Mercury say all the things she’d been too scared to say.

“What the _fuck_ makes you think it’s okay for you to touch her?”

“Look, kid, I was just—” the guy reached for the fake Mercury, only for the image of her friend to spin nimbly out of his way, landing behind him and forcing him to turn his back on Emerald.

“Being a complete piece of shit?” The image of Mercury bared his teeth and doubled up his fists.

“I’m not gonna fight a kid,” the guy grumbled.

“But you’re okay with trying to screw one, huh?” And it was all too easy for Emerald to mute the sound of the door chiming as she slipped through it.

By the time she’d willed the fake Mercury to feint a couple times before landing a kick to the guy’s crotch and evaporating, she was sprinting away into the night.

She braced herself for the sound of the bell over the door chiming as the guy gave chase, but there were no sounds of pursuit, just the fevered rhythm of her own drumming boots and frantic breathing.

Once she’d crossed the parking lot, she grappled onto the first rooftop she found, hating the exposed moments she spent clambering up the wall. She didn’t stop running for a long time, hoping the wind and speed and adrenaline would burn off this slimy, crawling feeling between her shoulder blades, but it wouldn’t fade.

The thought of going back to her empty terrace, high in the air where no one could help her if one of the shadows peeled itself free of the wall and attacked, made the crawling worse.

Not for the first time, she found herself wishing she knew where Mercury lived. It was probably creepy and invasive to wish she could climb through her best friend’s window in the dead of night and sleep on his floor, but she’d let him sleep on _her_ floor plenty of times.

Mercury was her partner, and she’d sleep a lot better knowing he was there. He wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her.

But she didn’t know where Mercury lived, because he was apparently still so embarrassed by her that he hadn’t even told his father that she existed, and so Emerald was alone.

Well, not _entirely_ alone.

Mercury was her best friend, but he wasn’t her only one anymore. Lavender had said she’d be crashing at Daily’s—maybe Emerald could crash there too.

She turned her feet toward the garden center and picked up the pace.

When she arrived at the little shack where Daily lived, the door was closed, but the gleam of a flashlight shone around its edges, and hushed voices sounded from inside. Not knowing what else to do, she knocked.

The voices went silent.

A moment later, the door swung open to reveal Daily, alone, his ears flicked back in anxiety. They perked back up when he saw Emerald. Lavender popped into visibility behind him, taking her hand off of his shoulder and leaving the reach of his Semblance. She lowered the knife that she’d had raised, as if she’d been braced to skewer intruders.

“Hey Green!” Lavender grinned. “Nice of you to drop by! You want us to deal you in for the next round of—are you okay?”

And it was then that Emerald realized that she was shaking from head to toe.

“I think I’m not,” she said quietly. She cracked a smile. “But ‘Are You Okay?’ _does_ sound like a pretty good card game.”

Wordlessly, Daily padded to the back of the shack and returned with a wool blanket. He bundled it around Emerald’s shoulders and tugged her through the door. It would have felt weird, given that she’d said maybe a dozen words to the kid all told in her entire life, but there was a kind shininess in his black eyes, and it was hard to feel threatened by somebody whose head—ears not included—didn’t even come up to her chin.

Emerald shambled forward and sat down, so that the three of them formed a rough triangle around the flashlight on the ground. She shivered back against the wall, fighting down the sense that a hand was going to clap down onto her shoulder from behind.

“Do you wanna talk about it, Emerald?” Lavender asked, scooting closer to her. It was the first time Lavender had actually said her name.

“Not really,” said Emerald. “Just—I might take you up on that eye-shanking offer sometime.”

Daily’s mouth formed a little _o_ of disgust and confusion, but he said nothing.

“With pleasure, Green,” said Lavender.

“Do you need to stay the night?” Daily asked in his soft, small voice. Then he shook his head, ears going flat. “Forget that—it’s midnight and people are scary. You’re staying the night.”

“Thank you,” Emerald whispered, drawing the blanket tighter around herself. “So, would you mind, uh, dealing me in?”

Lavender grinned, a little forced, but Emerald appreciated the effort. “Yeah, Day, you ready for a high-stakes round of ‘Are You Okay?’”

“You—you do know there’s no actual card game with that name, right?” said Daily, shuffling with quick, practiced motions.

“Just funnin’” said Lavender. She leaned over to Emerald and whispered, “Day’s a little literal. Sometimes you gotta break things down for him.”

Emerald nodded quietly.

“Yes, Lav, my brain is bad at idioms. Please whisper that like it’s an ancient curse on my bloodline.”

Emerald giggled despite herself, and Daily started slapping down cards in order, the pattern of it soothing.

“I bought this deck with the money you gave me,” Daily said without looking up, and Emerald remembered the summer day almost three years ago when she’d laid the stack of lien down in front of Daily’s hut, the caution in his eyes as he’d approached it. “It’s good that you’re getting to play a round with it.”

And the ugly, crawling parts of the world faded, just a little, because for right now, Emerald was in a quiet, gold-lit place where kindness to strangers paid itself back, just like the fairytales said.

* * *

Mercury’s task was simple.

The village of Woodhaven, about a two hours’ ride north of Vale by bullhead, had been founded by a group of Faunus seeking autonomy from the kingdom. The White Fang presence in the community, while not radical, was pretty high, and the locals were notoriously un-fond of humans intruding on their village.

So, even though his task was simple, Mercury felt a quiet unease. He chose to chalk that unease up to intercultural awkwardness and not to the fact that he was about to bring about a murder.

He jogged down the town’s main thoroughfare, putting a couple deliberate stumbles into his gait. The only people in the road were a trio of kids around the age he’d been when he’d met Emerald—one deer-tailed, another bunny-eared, and the third (yikes) skunk-tailed. A table with a brightly patterned cloth covering it sat across the road from them. Whoever was selling the little stone figurines arranged on the table had abandoned their wares.

Mercury kept jogging past them, doing his best to make his breathing sound jagged and uneven.

 _“Act frightened and weak,”_ Dad had told him, smirking. _“It shouldn’t be too hard for you.”_

Dad’s intel told him to make for the Blighted Elm Inn, where the village’s Huntsmen congregated most afternoons to receive jobs.

It was less than a block away from where the kids were playing. Even Mercury’s undyingly shitty reading comprehension couldn’t make him miss it—the sign was shaped like a gnarled, withering tree.

He hurried up the steps to the dark green double doors of the inn, stumbling inside and making a terrible racket.

“Help!” he cried the second he crossed the threshold into the dim first-floor bar. “Help, it’s my dad!”

The Huntsmen of Woodhaven were notorious for their tendency to turn a blind eye to distress calls from humans. All save one. Dad’s target.

A guy with crocodile teeth took another drink of his beer and shook his head. “Sorry, kid. No can do.”

“But his leg!” Mercury shouted, waving his arms in alarm and hoping he wasn’t hamming it up too much. “We were hiking and he fell and he’s stuck and you can see the bone, and the Grimm are probably—”

A woman with a zebra-striped mohawk shook her head ruefully. “Another one for you, Maura,” she said.

“Looks like.” A towering woman with long brown hair and resplendent—a word Emerald had taught him—antlers slung a giant, double-bladed axe over her shoulder and walked toward Mercury. More than anything, she sounded tired, but she smiled a little when she reached him. “Okay, kid, take me to your dad.”

Maura Ellwood was, according to the file Dad had shown him, the only human-friendly Huntress in Woodhaven, a terrifying melee fighter, and a single mother. She’d carved her own weapon out of a redwood tree.

Mercury wasn’t looking forward to watching Dad kill her.

When they reached the gaggle of kids playing on the village’s main road, Maura walked over to them, and the deer-tailed kid whirled and hugged her around the middle. She hugged him back, ruffled his hair, and Mercury turned away, a knot forming in his throat.

Kid would be an orphan after today, like Em. Maybe the other Huntsmen would take care of him. But he’d probably read fairy tales to himself long after dark and struggle to remember her voice. Maybe he’d try to find her face in cashiers and booksellers and anyone who smiled at him. There’d be a hole in him, and he’d try to fill it by becoming friends with the first worthless assassin’s kid that stumbled into his path, and…

Mercury shook himself, trying to dislodge Emerald from his thoughts, to focus on the mission.

“Another hiker,” Maura was saying, and her kid was laughing. “You be careful till I get back, ‘kay, Bee?”

“Yeah!” He had such a buzzy little kid voice. Had Mercury ever sounded that young?

The little figurines on the table were still unattended. The tiny stone wolf Emerald had given him was a weight against his ankle, a debt he hadn’t paid. Before Maura could see him, he snuck a hand out and picked up a little jade housecat. He ferreted it into his pocket and turned back around while she was still facing her kid.

“That’s my little prince,” she somehow said with a straight face, and she kissed her kid on the head. “If I’m not back by dinner, pester Deb till she buys you some.”

She straightened back up and turned to Mercury. “Now, let’s go get your dad.”

Mercury led her up a winding trail out of the village. The hard part of his task was over. He’d gotten the target’s trust, and leading her to the ravine where Dad was lying in wait would be a simple matter of a two-mile hike. He didn’t have to sleep on bruises tonight.

Except he couldn’t stop thinking about that godsdamn kid who would spend the rest of his life looking like someone had shot his dog every time a friend had to go run an errand. Gods, Em had looked like she was about to cry when he’d left her yesterday, he couldn’t let that kid—

About half an hour out from the village, he stopped, feeling like a line was pulling him back.

The words were tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them. “My dad didn’t get hurt hiking, he’s an assassin, and he’s up in the brush by the ravine and he’s going to kill you.”

In front of him, Maura turned around, frowning. “Would you mind running that by me one more time, kid?”

“My dad,” he said, forcing himself to talk slowly. There was no un-throwing a grenade, so he might as well be clear. “Is Marcus Black.”

At the name, Maura’s eyes widened, and Mercury guessed that Dad wasn’t just drunk and delusional when he talked about having a name that struck fear into his enemies. She schooled her expression back into a tough, neutral face almost instantly. He knew that trick when he saw it—he’d picked it up when he was five.

Then she asked what seemed to Mercury an irrelevant question. “What’s your name, kid?”  
  
“Mercury,” he said.

“Okay, Mercury,” she said calmly. She was taking it pretty well, considering. “Why are you telling me this?”

 _Because my guilt over the fact that I’m a shitty friend to my friend who is an orphan sabotaged my brain and gave me idiot mouth._ That was way too much to wade through, so instead he held up his left hand and peeled up his glove so that she could see the scars that wrapped around his palm and the back of his hand. They were just as deep as they’d been when he’d met Emerald.

A murderous look overtook Maura’s face, and Mercury felt a spark of hope that maybe, maybe she could beat Dad.

“Your Dad’s not going to kill me, Mercury,” she said stonily. “I’m going to kill him. Now let’s go get backup.”

“No! You can’t!” Mercury jumped back and spread his arms, like Maura wasn’t capable of flinging him over her shoulder like a sack of flour and going on anyway.

“Can you give me a decent reason I should fight him alone?” She raised an eyebrow.

“He wanted me to have you back to him—” Mercury checked the mostly useless burner scroll that Dad had lent him for the mission—“eight minutes from now at the outside. If we go past that, he hops back on the bullhead and leaves. He comes back when we’re not expecting him.” His voice fell. “He’s… he’s a professional mostly, but if you take me—if you piss him off, he’ll definitely kill your kid.”

If Mercury hadn’t dawdled on the way there, if he hadn’t wasted so much time wavering, Maura would have had time to run for backup.

If she died now, it would be his fault. 

Maura crossed her arms, frowning, and closed her eyes. To herself, Mercury thought, she said, “I’m a Huntress.”

When she opened them, she said, “Take me to your father. And tell me everything you can about his fighting style on the way.”

Mercury did his best, talking quickly as they walked, telling her not to get boxed in, to watch out for the electrified wire in Dad’s weapon, to be ready when he sprang from the underbrush.

“The main thing,” he said, “is to not let him touch you. He needs contact to take your Semblance.”

“Speaking of,” said Maura, and she leaned a hand against an elm. Her hand glowed where it met the bark, and her aura shone a brighter gold. The tree withered and shrank, its bark blackening and peeling as her aura grew more brilliant. When she pulled her hand away, the tree was half-dead.

She cracked her back and smiled at Mercury’s dumbstruck expression.

“I drain the aura from plants,” she said. “Should be pretty hard for your dad to put a dent in me.”

Mercury smiled, but his chest was cold. If Dad figured out what he’d done…

“Hey, Mercury.” He looked up to see Maura smiling a smile like his, a smile that she didn’t mean. “I’m going to tell you a secret: I like talking to people when I get scared.”

Mercury just frowned.

“I can see you’re not much of a talker, but since my chances of survival are lower than either of us would like, I figured you might indulge me.”

“Okay.” He cast about for anything to say, because he owed the woman he was leading to her death a decent conversation. Watch him find a way to screw that up, too. “Why do you go help hikers even though none of the other Faunus Huntsmen will? I mean, I know humans kind of suck.”

“Oh! That’s a good one!” said Maura. “The truth is, Mercury, that people are people are people are people are people, ears and antlers or no.” She shrugged. “I’m a Huntress. I help people. Some humans are awful. Some Faunus are awful. But they're alive, and I protect life. With only a couple exceptions, nobody deserves to be eaten alive by Ursai.”

Mercury nodded. “I’m guessing my dad’s one of the exceptions?”

“Oh, most definitely.” Maura smiled. “So--so I know the life I'm protecting, what would you do if I were to, ah, _remove_ your father from the picture?” On _remove,_ she tapped her axe with two fingers.

The question hit Mercury hard. Dad was a force bearing down, driving his entire life even as Mercury struggled against him. If that force was gone, what would he do? When he was ten, he hadn’t been able to imagine an answer, but he could now.

And since Maura was probably going to die, that answer would be safe with her.

“I have this friend,” he said. “Emerald. She doesn’t know about Dad or anything. She’d try and kill him if she knew, and I can’t—I can’t lose her. She’s an orphan— _amazing_ pickpocket—but she has all these big stupid dreams, like, she wants to be a Huntress and win the Vytal Tournament, and I’d…” His voice went too small. “I’d like to do those things with her.”

He took a breath and shook his head. “But you won’t win.”

“Probably not,” said Maura. “But I’m going to try for you. You’re a person, Mercury, and I help people.”

Mercury tried to kill the feeling of hope rising from his chest into his throat, but it had already dug thorns into him.

“He’s just over the next hill,” Mercury said, nodding over a rise. “I’m supposed to stay out of the way. Er. Good luck?”

“Thank you,” said Maura, hefting her axe into a ready position. “Now get your act back on.”

Mercury nodded and broke into a jog. “He’s just over here!” he yelled. “I hope the Grimm don’t have him yet!” He scampered over the crest of the hill before Maura did. The path fell away into a steep, thin ravine on his right. On his left, the terrain stretched up almost vertically, thickly wooded and filled with undergrowth. On his left, Dad was waiting.

Mercury ran straight through Dad’s target zone and turned back to call back to Maura. “Hurry!”

“I’m comin’, kid!” Maura came charging over the hill, and the second she reached the flattest stretch of the path, Dad sprang.

He materialized out of the undergrowth like a leopard, his weapon in baton form, and swung down at Maura with terrifying speed.

Maura was ready for him, and she caught the blow on the blade of her axe, but already he was spinning out of the way so that he was behind her, and he fired off a shot from the end of his baton, striking her square in the back. She rolled before he could fire again, coming up with her axe raised and spinning it to block his next two shots before cleaving it down at his head.

When he caught the hit on his baton, she kicked out hard, catching him in the gut and knocking him back several paces. Dad let his momentum carry him into a crouch, his mouth quirking up at the corner.

Dad did like a good fight.

Maura lifted her axe to her shoulder, gears whirring, and fired off a shot from the rocket launcher that it had become. Dad leapt into the air, just dodging the explosion that rocked the earth and made Mercury’s ears ache, and then went flipping back down, swinging his baton at Maura’s face as she switched her weapon back.

Maura caught it on her axeblade, but fast as thought, Dad twisted his hands, the baton coming apart into two sawed-off shotguns with a garotte wire running between them. With a flick of his thumb, he activated the electricity dust on either end of the razor wire, and Maura let out a cry that Mercury hoped he would be able to forget as the lightning shot down through her weapon and into her body.

Dad fired both shotguns while Maura was frozen, and if she hadn’t sucked the aura out of that elm half a mile back, Mercury was sure hers would have shattered. Dad dealt a kick to her stomach, and she stumbled backwards over the cliff and down the ravine. Mercury ran to the edge and peered down, hoping she would land safely, hoping Dad wouldn’t see that hope on his face.

Dad jumped down after her, and as he was sliding down the wall of the ravine, Maura found her footing and fired her rocket launcher at the spot right above his hand. The explosion filled the ravine with blinding dust, and the last thing Mercury saw was his father being flung into the air like a ragdoll before hitting the wall of the crevasse hard and sliding down into the fog.

Maybe she could do it. The thought thrilled and terrified him.

“Please,” Mercury whispered, and half of him was the guy standing on the cliff, hoping the monster that beat him would finally take a fall, and half of him was the kid he’d grown to resent, who’d stand by the cabin with his dog and bounce up and down on the balls of his feet in excitement, waiting for his dad’s bullhead to land in the yard.

“Please,” they both said.

There were sounds of struggle from the dust cloud, Dad’s grunts of effort and frustration, Maura’s cries of wrath. Through the fog, Mercury could see nothing.

“Please.” And this time Mercury was decided. He knew who he wanted to see rise out of that dust, and it wasn’t his father. He wanted to go home to Emerald, because Emerald was home now. He wanted to stop lying. He wanted to sleep knowing that no one was going to crush his ribs under a boot.

He wanted to be free.

The dust cleared just in time for him to watch his father put two bullets in Maura’s head.

Something inside of him broke.

* * *

Emerald planted herself on the roof by the bank two hours early the next Saturday. She wasn’t going to be late again. She wasn’t going to do anything to make Mercury angry with her.

She’d spent two nights at Daily’s before she went back to her terrace, and she still felt too small. She curled into a ball when she sat down and held her knees tight.

Gods, she needed a hug.

Mercury didn’t do hugs.

When he did show up, she didn’t try and offer him a hand over the edge of the roof, and she found that once he was actually kneeling beside her, she had no idea what to say. Normally, she’d tell him about anything scary that had happened to her, but what if all the trouble she got into was the thing that was making him snappish and sick of her? What would he even think of her using his image as a shield?

Mercury didn’t seem to know what to say either. Now that she really looked at him, she saw that there were dark circles under his eyes, that his back seemed hunched under a weight.

He broke the silence before she could ask if he was okay.

He pulled something pale green out of his pocket and set it on the shingles in front of her. Frowning, Emerald picked it up. It was a little cat, curled up asleep, carved out of jade, and it was smooth against her palm. Her eyes stung.

She looked up at Mercury, raising her eyebrows in a question.

His voice sounded worn out and scratchy. “I—I figured—since I have my wolf—” he looked away, bit his lip. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

“It’s—it’s okay,” Emerald said, but she was already crying.

“Oh gods, I made it weird, didn’t I?” He leaned forward, but he didn’t reach out to her, probably because she was gross and a mess and way more trouble than she was worth.

She shook her head, made herself breathe, forced the crushing feeling in her throat back down to her chest. “No, I just—I’ve just had a really crappy week.” She wiped the tears away with her forearm. “It’s really good to see you.”

“Yeah,” he said, but he sounded like he was talking from far away. “You too.”

She took another look at the dark circles under his eyes. It had been a long time since he’d let her help him, and she’d been feeling more and more like baggage ever since. Maybe…

“Do you—do you wanna crash at my place? Just for a little bit? You look…” and here, she cut herself off, because implying that Merc looked weak was a surefire way to piss him off.

Mercury was very still for a moment, his shoulders still bowed under that invisible weight.

Slowly, he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I wanna do that. Let’s go.”

Emerald blinked in surprise. She honestly hadn’t expected that to work, and the knot in her chest loosened a little.

“What about your groceries?”

Mercury shrugged. “I’ll grab ‘em on the way home.”

They were halfway across the rooftops back to Emerald’s place when she realized that Mercury hadn’t smirked or joked once the whole time they’d been talking, and that made her more afraid than it had any right to.

The second they’d climbed through the window, Mercury shambled over to her bedroll and collapsed facedown on it, like they were both still nine years old, and Emerald smiled a little at that.

“You good there?” she asked.

“Mmph,” said Mercury, nodding into the cow pillow.

Her terrace felt more like home than it had in months. While Mercury dozed off, she pulled the jade cat out of her pocket, searching the room for a place worthy of it. She wondered where he’d gotten it, if he’d bought it honestly or nicked it using the skills she’d taught him. She tried placing it on the windowsill. No. Then beside her food stash. Still not right. In the end, she set it on top of her little bookshelf, a tiny sentinel defending her library. Perfect.

She sat back in her reading corner with her fairytale collection and let the worn old stories and Mercury’s quiet breathing carry her back to a world that wasn't so ugly.

* * *

Mercury had had a lot of time to think on the bullhead back from the job. He’d had even more time to think in the shattering silence of his room while Dad was out getting celebratory drinks.

He’d had time to dream of the dust at the bottom of the ravine clearing to reveal not Maura but Emerald being ripped through by bullets.

He was never going to be free. Dad was going to keep him leashed to his side forever. And if Mercury kept Emerald linked to him, he’d also be keeping her linked to Dad. Dad would find her someday, or worse, all the awfulness Dad pumped into Mercury would spill out and hurt Emerald, like it had when he’d yelled at her last week.

When she’d started crying today, he hadn’t even been able to reach out and touch her shoulder like a normal person because he’d half-expected his hand to sprout claws.

He reached his decision while sprawled out on her bedroll—it smelled like her, like sunlight and citrus—watching her try to find a place to put the cat he’d stolen. She set it down so carefully each time, then stood back, studied it, and tried another place. It was so sweetly, weirdly methodical, and he knew in that moment that he would never deserve her.

So he watched her settle down with a book, watched that serene little smile cross her face, and let himself sink down into warm, sunlit sleep because he knew that he would never have it again.

When he woke up, he let Emerald read her new book to him until she was hoarse. He kept the gagging noises to a minimum when Waverly the farm boy revealed that every time he said, “As you wish,” he meant, “I love you.” He let himself laugh at the best jokes.

He loved the story as well as he could, because he knew he’d never let her read him the end of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, a fanfic author must ask herself, "Is it too on-the-nose to have Marcus kill Bambi's mom?" And then she consults her character reference for Marcus, which is literally just that textpost that reads, "Local Man F*cking Sucks," and decides that nope, that's just on-brand for him.
> 
> An apology in the form of Chapter Two of Prank Regents will go up sometime this weekend. As always, thank you so much for reading, and I'm excited to talk with you guys in the comments :)


	11. Casualty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which I'm sorry.

“You should start thinking about a weapon,” Dad said while Mercury was still slumped against the back wall of the house, an arm braced over his ribs to fight back the stabbing feeling in them. He was standing, at least, so he must not have done too badly today.

Mercury nodded. “I have some ideas.” That was true. He and Emerald had started to talk about upgrades to their weapons during sparring a couple of times, before the nightmares had found him. Talking weapons with Emerald was fun. It felt like planning for a future where they’d fight Grimm and take names. Talking weapons with Dad just felt like planning a murder.

As Dad walked back into the house, Mercury shook his head. He shouldn’t let Emerald keep creeping into his thoughts like this. He was going to have to let her go if he wanted her to be safe, and then thinking about her would only get him hurt.

He had his plan mostly worked out. After last week, he’d thought of just vanishing, never showing up at the bank again, finding a new place to shop. The problem with that plan was that Emerald was as smart as she was stubborn, and the chances that she’d successfully stake out and find his new shopping location were pretty high, and then she’d be back in his life, back in danger.

No, he needed to leave her so that she wouldn’t _want_ to find him. And so that it would be difficult for him to cave in to his loneliness and go track her down again.

In the night, he’d readied the words. He hoped they wouldn’t stay with her for too long.

That Saturday, he ran down to the bank for the last time, climbed up Emerald’s line to the roof. The smile she gave him when he reached the top made his chest hurt. He let himself look, for once, doing his best to memorize the gleam in her eye, the dimple at the corner of her mouth, the casual way her arm rested on her knee—Em, alive and in motion, and she’d stay that way if he could follow through with this.

“Do I have something on my face?” she asked, and Mercury realized that he might have let himself look for a moment too long.

“Oh! No.” He shook his head. “Just face.”

Emerald let out a relieved laugh. “Thank gods. I lifted a convenience store pizza last night, and the thing was a _mess._ Never again.”

Mercury smirked. “Sounds like you’re getting ambitious.”

“Ah yes, the convenience store pizza theft: crime in its most sophisticated form.” Emerald rolled her eyes.

Mercury laughed and then remembered his mission. “So, we were gonna meet your friends?”

“Yeah!” said Emerald. “At Tukson’s.” As they hopped across the rooftops, walking at a leisurely pace, she went on, “They’re good to play cards with, and—” she paused, her mouth twisting in thought—“well, you don’t have to worry about me so much. I know you can’t be around a lot, so… I want you to know I have backup.”

Mercury smiled and pushed down the feeling of failure. _He_ was supposed to be Em’s backup.

More proof that she’d be better off after today.

“Cool,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The bookshop was a little dim and a little dusty, and the second they walked through the door, Emerald’s eyes lit up like the place was Amity Arena.

“Green!” A wild-haired ram Faunus girl who Mercury assumed was Lavender rushed forward from the comics section and crushed Emerald in a hug. Gods, they’d been friends for maybe a month and they were already hugging friends. He had never let Em hold him like she was holding Lavender right now, even when she’d tried when they were small.

Something about that left him with a bitter feeling that he didn’t have any right to.

“And you must be Wolfboy.” Keeping an arm looped around Emerald’s shoulders, Lavender stuck out a hand to Mercury.

“You told her my dumb nickname from when we were kids?” Mercury frowned at Emerald, affronted.

“I seem to remember you thinking it was cool at the time.” Emerald was all mock-innocent smiles.

“And I seem to remember paying you fifteen sour straws last year to _forget that intel.”_ He shook Lavender’s hand. The hand that wasn’t resting on Em’s shoulder like it belonged there in a way that his own never would. “Mercury.”

He looked over her shoulder to see a tiny fox Faunus boy—Daily, right?—hovering against the wall and looking like he kind of wanted to disintegrate.

_Same, Daily. Same._

And okay, Mercury could admit it. He’d kind of hoped that Emerald’s new friends would be terrible and stupid and so blatantly incompetent that he couldn’t leave her. But Daily’s eyes scanned the store like he was looking for intruders, and Lavender, for as loud as her laugh was, never let her hands move too far from the bigass knives strapped to her back.

Emerald would be just fine with them.

Tukson—how had Emerald not mentioned those sideburns? They were _nightmarish_ —walked out of the backroom with a couple of heavy old books in hand. “Daily, I found those textbooks you were looking for—oh,” Tukson stopped, seeing the gaggle of them in the doorway. “You must be Mercury. Emerald’s told us all a lot about you.”

“All embarrassing things, I’m sure,” he said, cutting his eyes at her, and she snickered, and gods, would he ever hear her snicker again?

“Oh! Merc!” Emerald said, hurrying him over to a shelf. “Once we finish _The Countess Fiancé,_ I’m definitely reading you this one.” She set a gold-covered book of old Vacuan legends in his hands, and he thumbed through. The illustrations were ridiculously cool, drawn in this geometric style he’d never seen before.

He’d never get to hear Em read it.

“You _read_ to him?” Lavender said with an incredulous grin, and Mercury felt his face go red. Daily bugged his eyes out at her the same way Emerald did when Mercury wasn’t being polite to Cypress.

Emerald made a couple stammering noises, and Mercury realized that the burden of replying was going to fall to him.

_I love looking weak and stupid in front of my best friend’s replacement friends._

He shrugged. “I like looking at the pictures more than the words. They don’t give me a headache.”

“Words give you a headache?” Tukson asked, a thoughtful look on his face, and Mercury bristled.

“I’m not stupid!” he snapped. “I know the letters, they just scramble.” He looked at Emerald. “It’s like when you overuse your Semblance—it’s just a lot of work.” He hunched his shoulders. Reading was one of the only things that, no matter how hard he practiced, he never got better at. Dad found it hilarious, and Mercury… it was proof, right? If he couldn’t do something that was simple for everyone else, he had to be weak, somehow. Stupid.

Tukson was still frowning, and he pointed at a shelf on the far left side of the store. “Do me a favor, would you, Mercury?”

“Sure,” Mercury grumbled, rolling his eyes as he walked toward the shelf.

“There should be another hardback copy of _The Countess Fiancé_ on the second lowest shelf.”

Mercury stooped down and pulled it free.

“Have a look at the first page.”

Mercury did, and he read, _When Daffodil was born in the small country of Flora, there was very little about her to suggest that she would one day be the most beautiful woman in the world._

He blinked. He’d heard Emerald read that sentence last week, and now he could actually _see_ it. The letters were weighted somehow, held in place so that the words were easier to make out. It was still tricky, and it still took him a couple repeat readings to actually tack down the meanings, but the straining feeling in his mind was less irritating.

“I’m not stupid,” he said quietly, and this time he actually believed it.

“Of course you’re not.” Tukson shrugged. “You’re dyslexic.”

And at the risk of looking stupid a second time, Mercury said, “Run that by me again?”

Before Tukson could answer, Emerald had already hauled her dictionary out of her pack and thunked it down on the nearest shelf.

“D-I or D-Y?” she asked Tukson, and Mercury grinned at how effortlessly she’d yanked all the attention in the room away from his own nervousness and toward the fact that she was a complete nerd.

The grin faltered when he remembered that Emerald wouldn’t want to help him after today.

“D-Y,” said Tukson, with the puzzled look of someone who didn’t yet understand that Em was a complete nerd.

Lavender had crossed her arms and was shaking her head with a tired-looking smile. She maybe had some idea of how complete a nerd Emerald was.

“Dyslexia!” Emerald beamed, triumphant. “A learning—” she frowned, casting a glance at him, her mouth twisting like she was trying to come up with a different word than the one that was written—“difficulty marked by the impairment of the ability to recognize and comprehend written words.”

Tukson shrugged. “It’s pretty common. My niece has it.” He smiled. “I’m glad I could help.”

And for the thousandth time, and in the thousandth tiny way, knowing Emerald had made Mercury’s life better. But all he would ever be able to do was make her life worse. She had real friends now, who could stay with her all week and hug her and play cards with her at night. Friends who wouldn’t bring the deadliest assassin in Remnant down on her head. Wanting to keep her in his life was selfish, pure and simple.

He clapped the book shut and tossed it back onto the shelf.

“Lavender,” he said, searching for a new train of thought, “what comics are good?”

By the time Mercury and Emerald parted ways from Lavender and Daily outside of Tukson’s, Mercury’s stomach was in knots. It was too much like the paralyzed feeling he’d had right after he’d turned nine, the moment he’d knocked Emerald into the ground and known that he was supposed to kick her as hard as he could.

He’d been right not to hurt her last time, but the fact that he’d even considered doing it proved that he couldn’t be trusted, that this time, hurting Emerald really was the only way to help her.

Once they were up on the roofs, Emerald smiled and nudged him with her shoulder, oblivious to what he was planning. “I’m glad things are back to normal.”

“Hm?” He surfaced from his thoughts, only half paying attention.

“I mean, I know we kind of had that fight a couple weeks ago, and I’m just—glad you could forgive me. For all the trouble I got in.”

And there were so many things Mercury wanted to say to that—that she should be the one doing the forgiving, not him, that he was the one who had screwed up, who _was_ screwed up, that she didn’t need to apologize for his shitty mood—but all of them would make what he had to say next harder to sell.

He shrugged. “Whatever.” He didn’t miss the way Emerald’s mouth half opened and then pressed into a line, but he pretended that he had. He did his best to go steely and numb, the way he had before he’d sliced the throat of the dog in the junkyard.

The best he could hope for was a clean break.

* * *

The whole run back to Emerald’s terrace, Mercury was _weird._

What did he think of the comics Lavender showed him? Cool, I guess.

Didn’t Daily seem really sweet? Sure.

Even when she asked him about the greaves he’d been thinking of, the ones with the firing mechanisms built in, he’d shrugged and said they’d probably turn out fine. Not a single gripe about how tricky it would be to make the shots line up with his kicks, no grumbling about how his Dad would never drop money on the air Dust he’d need to perfect them.

“I’m getting sick of dragging myself up buildings,” Emerald said, trying another angle. “I think if I had a retractable chain or cord or something in my weapon it’d be a lot easier.”

“Probably would be,” said Mercury, instead of asking her where she planned to fit that into a gun.

It was like talking to a brick wall. He’d been plenty nice to Lavender and Daily earlier, so what was his deal now? This was the second week in a row that he’d been weird and unresponsive, and the week before that he’d been stormy. He wasn’t himself, and he apparently didn’t trust her enough to tell her what was making him act weird, and that burned.

She threw one of her picks so it caught on the corner of her window, and out of habit she looped an arm around Mercury’s middle to tow him across with her. Mercury was always kind of touchy about people reaching for him, but he’d started letting Emerald do it. Today, though, he didn’t cringe, exactly, but he kind of went stiff, so she dropped her arm.

“Sorry,” she said, “I should have asked.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “Whatever.”

“Stop _saying_ that!” The frustration that had been rising in her chest burst out all at once. “I know it’s not ‘whatever’! Something has been _wrong_ lately, and you won’t tell me what it is!”

“It’s you!” he snapped, taking a step back from her.

Emerald had had lots of things that she’d been planning to say, but at that outburst, they all died in her throat. Half of her was shocked beyond belief. The other half, the half that still wished she had a way of hiding her eyes, whispered that this was always going to happen.

There was no part of her that didn’t hurt.

The shocked half took over. “W-what?” Her eyes were wide, and they were already starting to burn.

Mercury glared. “You heard me.”

“I—I mean—what did I do wrong?”

_I can fix it. Please, tell me anything, and I’ll fix it._

“Nothing.” He shrugged. “Everything. I’m just ready to move on.”

“But—but we’re gonna move on together,” she said, but she could feel that future melting in her hands. “Beacon. Partners.”

“Yeah, a pickpocket with no transcript’s gonna get into Beacon.” Mercury’s laugh was ugly. “I might get in, but you? No. I’m tired of your fairy tales, Em. I’m sick of listening to you wish for things that you know are never gonna happen!”

“But you said we—” He’d made her promises, hadn’t he? Not in words, exactly, but he’d helped her choose her gloves. He’d said he’d like to be partners.

“I was a dumb little kid.” He rolled his eyes. “Like you apparently still are.”

Emerald bit her lip to stop it from quivering. “Why are you being so mean?”

“Because I _am_ mean.” His grey eyes were hard. “And you still wanted to be pals.” He shook his head. “Look, you don’t have to make such a big deal. I’m just done, okay? There’s no reason to keep someone around if they’re deadweight. Don’t go looking for me.”

He turned on his heel, stomping off across the rooftop, and it felt like someone had sunk an iron hook into Emerald’s guts and pulled. The hook yanked her towards him.

“Wait!” she shouted, and her voice sounded puny. “Wait, you can’t!”

Mercury turned. “Why not?”

And her mind screamed, _Because I watched fireworks with you!_ _Because we saved each other from kidnappers when we were eight! Because I read to you!_ _Because sometimes when you smile I forget how to breathe!_

_Because you are the only thing that has ever, ever felt like home!_

What she ended up yelling was, “Because you’re my best friend!”

Mercury chuckled, and tears started rolling down Emerald’s face, searing. “Which really goes to show what awful taste you have.”

He turned away again, started walking, and any dignity Emerald might have had was gone, gone, gone because the hook in her gut was twisting and tearing, and the person she lived for was walking away without a care in the world, and she had to stop him, and the last three words left in her arsenal broke free of her chest and rang out through the air.

_“I love you!”_

Mercury froze in his tracks, shoulders tightening. He would turn around, Emerald told herself. He would turn around, and he would run back to her, and he would hug her tight and explain that this was all a terrible misunderstanding because she was his best friend, too, and he loved her too much to hurt her like this.

Mercury glanced over his shoulder, and his face was still set in that cruel, sneering grin. Something in Emerald’s chest crumpled.

“Well, I think that’s cute,” he said, and he hopped over the side of the roof, landed with a single clang on the fire escape, and was gone.

In the seconds before she slumped to her knees, Emerald was sure it had been a nightmare. She’d had nightmares like this before, where Mercury finally came to his senses and realized how little he needed her.

But in nightmares, she thought as her knees hit the ground, you didn’t make these embarrassing little hiccupping sounds, the kind that only happen when you’re crying so hard that your stomach churns and your chest caves in.

Emerald wrapped her arms tight around herself, like she was trying to keep her insides from falling out.

Mercury was gone.

Her best friend and her partner in crime and her kicking, breathing proof that she was a person worth caring about, was gone. Every cruel prediction that Mrs. Copperfield had hissed over her in those lonely orphanage years—that she had no right to the dreams she’d dug out of her book of fairy tales, that no one would ever love her—had come true.

Without him, was she anything at all?

* * *

Mercury marched through his grocery run with his head down and gave Cypress’s register a wide berth. He set off toward the house, walking on autopilot, his brain only half there.

When his footsteps led him back to the alley beside the bank, his legs stopped working. He sank against a wall, his breath suddenly gone, and shook.

Emerald loved him.

She loved him, and he’d thrown her away like she was garbage, and that was all the proof he needed that he’d done the right thing, yeah? That she’d be happier without him?

The way she’d stumbled after him, arms outstretched, tears in her eyes, planted a lurking doubt in his mind. He forced it down. She hadn’t known what he was when she’d reached for him that way. If Emerald knew everything about him, the blood on his hands and the thoughts in his head, she’d never have thought to use those three short words that were now lodged, immovable, in his chest.

Dad’s voice, the tone he’d borrowed to slice himself away from Emerald, scalded his throat like bile. But Dad was who he belonged to, now that he’d hurled Emerald out of his life.

No, he corrected himself. He had _always_ belonged to Dad, and the fact that he’d been stupid enough, for a little while, to think that he could belong to anyone else was what had gotten Emerald hurt.

He deserved whatever was waiting for him at the house.

Mercury forced himself to his feet, following gravity back to his father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Um. Sorry about that.
> 
> We've reached the darkest point, but next week, we'll start to see the dawn (after all, we're only two weeks out from the arc finale!). I'm hoping to have the next chapter of Prank Regents up tomorrow, but that looks pretty unlikely given how this week is going, so it might not go up till Sunday or Monday.
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading! You guys are the best :)


	12. The Keeper of My Pride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emerald and Mercury give each other strength, even when they're far apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this chapter ended up long enough that it probably could have been split into two, but I really didn't want to leave you guys on a cliffhanger. My apologies in advance if the length is inconvenient/overwhelming!
> 
> cw: There's some mild violence in Emerald's first POV section. More notably, Mercury's first POV section will contain some violence, and his second POV section will once again feature Marcus making the "Child Abuse" tag very necessary. On a more minor note, from this point onward, Mercury is going to swear like... well, like a twelve-and-a-half-year-old boy who's realized that he can swear.

Emerald was shopping at night again. It didn’t scare her anymore. Ever since Mercury had left her sobbing on that rooftop two weeks ago, she’d felt a kind of lonely invincibility. The worst-case scenario, the thing she’d been dreading since she was eight, had happened.

Logically, she knew that it could always get worse. Getting struck by lightning didn’t make you any less likely to get caught on the wrong side of a turf war. But something inside her had gone numb, and that made it hard to be afraid, even when she knew she had good reason to be.

The other reason the stuttering lights and sticky floors of tonight’s target store didn’t unnerve her was… a little weirder.

There was a guy, two aisles over, with a seedy look and wandering eyes and the slimy-feeling energy that Emerald had come to associate with danger. But the guy hadn’t looked at her once since she’d walked through the door, because her Semblance had made sure that he hadn’t _seen_ her walk through the door.

In her place, he’d seen Mercury.

She’d used the trick on her past three jobs, and no one unsavory had come within ten feet of her.

Lavender would say that hiding behind the face of the best friend (ex-best friend?) who’d deliberately ripped her heart out was one hundred percent fucked up.

Lavender was probably right. She’d been the one to find Emerald, two days after Mercury left, curled into a ball and so far beyond tears that she’d just been trembling. By that point, Emerald had missed two card game nights in a row. She’d forgotten that anyone would want anything to do with the person she was without Mercury.

She’d broken down crying again while explaining what Mercury had said, and Lavender had held her tight and then stood up, seemingly with the intention of breaking into every house in the ‘burbs with a knife until she found the right one and then exacting vengeance.

So, yeah. Lavender would think Emerald was out of her mind. Hell, _Emerald_ thought she might be out of her mind. Even after all the horrible things he’d said to her, he was what safety looked like, and _gods_ , that made her feel so stupid and naïve and like he was _right_ to have gotten free of her creepy dependence on him.

She didn’t bother to hide herself from the sweet-faced, pig-eared woman who was checking out at the register now. In fact, she was planning to slip out after her and use her as some cover from the darkness. If you looked like you belonged to a grown-up, people were less likely to mess with you.

The second the Faunus lady headed for the door, though, the man with the slimy presence looked up sharply, his eyes tracking her. She didn’t seem to notice as he loped after her, slipping out the door behind her.

An alarm bell went off in Emerald’s head. Whatever was about to happen out there in the dark was not going to end well for the sweet-looking woman and her silly pink tracksuit. Life on the rooftops had taught Emerald not to interfere with what happened on the ground, because that was a way to die, but.

But.

She wanted to be a Huntress. She blinked. That was the first time she’d known that since Mercury had left. She hadn’t known that that dream could exist outside of him. And she should have been scared, but it was hard to be scared when she knew that she could borrow Mercury’s sharp, proud face and his steel-toed boots if she needed them.

She waited for the cashier to turn around and start re-stocking the cigarettes, and then she darted out the door. Outside, there was no sign of the woman, or the creep who had followed her.

 _Krnch!_ A scraping of garbage cans from around the side of the building, a muffled sound of distress.

Emerald crept toward the corner.

“Please, please, all I have is what I spent on the gum, you have to believe me.” The woman had her back to the brick wall, and her voice was quavering as she stared down the barrel of the pistol in the guy’s hand. Her hands were raised beside her head. “I was just on my way home from the gym.”

The hammer of the gun clicked. “Well, if you don’t have anything worthwhile to offer me, I don’t see any reason why I should let a pig like you live.” The smile in the guy’s voice was ugly.

Emerald slipped into the shadows at the mouth of the alley.

“Please, I’ll—”

“What? Squeal for help?” The guy glanced at her ears and chuckled at his own racist joke, like he thought he was really clever for having come up with it.

Emerald activated her Semblance and stepped forward, doing her best to imitate Mercury’s calm, confident stride.

“Hey shit-for-brains,” she said, throwing on a smirk and letting her illusion do the same, “do me a favor and get some new material.”

The guy whirled, switching targets so that the gun was pointed at Emerald instead of his victim.

 _Good._ That was probably a weird thought to have upon a gun being pointed at her, but it meant that if he panicked and fired—which seemed likely given the way the veins in his forehead were straining,--he’d be firing at someone who knew how to dodge. The awkward, one-handed grip on his gun marked him as, in Mercury’s words, an amateur. Maybe even an incompetent. So did the fact that he hadn’t thought to use the woman he already had at gunpoint as a hostage. Emerald could take him.

“Look, kid,” the guy growled. “Unless you want me to put some holes in you, you’ll scram right now.”

The pink lady nodded, her eyes going wide. “Run,” she mouthed. “Run.”

Emerald slid into a fighting stance, and so did her illusion. “Try me.”

The guy fired. Emerald dodged to the left while her illusion rolled to the right. As the illusion of Mercury swung around and aimed a kick at the guy’s stomach, Emerald slipped one of her picks out. The guy fired straight through the illusion and into the concrete while Emerald reared up behind him and cracked him in the back of the head with the blunt end of her pick.

He collapsed like a bag of wet sand.

“Oh my gods.” The woman was trembling. “Oh, Brothers, are you all right?”

Because she hadn’t seen the illusion. She’d just seen a skinny, tired-looking girl walk into a darkened alley, cuss out an armed criminal, and knock him unconscious.

Mercury would probably have been offended by the question, but a weird swell of gratitude nearly knocked Emerald off her feet.

“I’m okay,” said Emerald quietly. “Are you?”

The woman didn’t nod. She didn’t say anything. She just stepped over the creep’s body and folded Emerald in her arms, tucked her head under her trembling chin. Emerald let her arms rest around the pink lady’s waist and wondered if this was what a hug from a mom felt like—soft and clean-smelling.

“You’re so little.” The woman took a step back, setting her hands on Emerald’s shoulders and peering down into her face. Emerald could see tears forming in her soft blue eyes. “You shouldn’t have—shouldn’t have had to— _thank_ you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Emerald. On the ground, the creep let out a groan. She frowned. “You might want to call the police.”

The pink lady let out a teary, nervous laugh. “I should, shouldn’t I? That’s what you do when—when this happens.”

“Yeah.” Emerald nodded, hoping her smile was encouraging because she knew firsthand the horrible shaking and crawling inside that the pink lady was probably feeling. “That’s what you do.”

Emerald stayed with the pink lady and held her free hand while she raised her scroll to her ear and explained, in a shaky voice, that she had been attacked, that her assailant was wounded, that she was unharmed.

“I’m going to stay until they get here,” Emerald said, because a Huntress wouldn’t leave a nice lady like this alone at night, even if her attacker was down for the count. “But when they do, I’ll have to leave.”

The pink lady blinked at her, questioning.

“I’m in some trouble with them,” she said. “I shouldn’t be, but I am.” She found herself glancing up at the pink lady’s gracefully pointed ears, thinking of the way the mall cops had fired on Lavender the second her hands had left her head.

The pink lady nodded in understanding. “That happens too much.” Her mouth pressed into a line. “Are you sure? You’re—I’m sorry, you’re just so small.”

“I can look after myself,” said Emerald. She wasn’t sure that was true, but she had to make it true, now that Mercury was gone.

The pink lady glanced back at the goon’s prone form and smiled. “I believe that.”

When flashing blue lights appeared within a block of the alley, Emerald let go of the pink lady’s hand, grappled up to the roof, and ran.

She arrived home to find her terrace in total darkness, which was good, because it meant that she couldn’t see the little jade cat Mercury had given her staring at her from the bookshelf.

 _That_ was the weirdest thing, wasn’t it? A week before he’d cut her off, he’d been dozing off on her bedroll and apologizing and giving her a gift that was so sweet and well thought-out that it was almost uncharacteristic. Had the strain of being nice to someone he saw as a burden just broken him? Had something happened in that week to change him?

Emerald couldn’t make sense of it no matter how long she laid there in the dark, staring up at the ceiling and running her fingers over the familiar threads of the awful cow pillow—it smelled like Mercury’s hair. She hadn’t known that Mercury’s hair even had a smell until she’d noticed it when he wasn’t there and turned with a reflexive leap of hope—only to feel a sinking disappointment that he wasn’t sitting there beside her. That he never would be.

She chucked the pillow at the far wall and rolled over. Two minutes later, she sat up, crossed the room, picked the pillow back up, and crawled back into bed, curling around it like it was something precious.

Jumbled in among all her thoughts of Mercury was the feeling of the pink lady’s arms wrapped around her, the feeling of being _worth something_ that she’d had in those seconds. She’d saved a life, and she’d done it on her own—sort of.

So why couldn’t she stop feeling like Mercury was right to leave her behind?

* * *

The bullhead was in rickety disrepair, the engine churning with an ugly, guttural rhythm.

And Dad had decided that now was a good time for a monologue.

There was a part of Mercury that, even knowing the consequences, wanted to lean back against the bulkhead and feign sleep. But the larger part of him was too worried about how much those consequences would hurt to go through with it.

“My Semblance,” Dad was saying, gesturing with the bottle, “is the best one someone like me can have, you understand?”

Mercury nodded, like he hadn’t heard this speech a gazillion times before. Like he wasn’t putting most of his focus into trying not to lean against the bruises that Dad’s baton had pounded into his back during yesterday’s training.

Dad took another swig and chuckled. “It takes the legs out from under people who think they’re on top of the world. Makes the field level. And there’s nobody in the world who can beat me on a level field.”

Two bullets tearing through Maura Ellwood’s head. Through Emerald’s. Mercury kept his face still.

“Even the limits of it, they remind me what I am.” He smiled. “Sure, I can only take one at a time. That just means that once I’ve got someone’s Semblance—” his fist closed around the air in front of Mercury’s face—“they’re not getting away.”

Like the guy Mercury had watched him axe this morning. He’d lasted maybe two seconds after Dad had ripped his Semblance out through his back and kept him from shrinking. The guy had screamed when Dad’s hand met his spine, and his aura had shattered instantly. Maybe it was the shock.

It was a busy day for Dad. They were flying straight from the first job to the second, and Dad had kicked him out of bed at four in the morning, and Mercury was _tired._

“It’s pretty common, you know, to think that all that misty talk about your Semblance reflecting your soul is just is bullshit, but there’s nothing misty about it.” Another swig. “I knew I was going to be the toughest son of a bitch on Remnant, and my Semblance matched me.”

Now _this_ part of the monologue was new, and Mercury frowned, thinking it over. Dad’s Semblance really did seem like a Semblance that an asshole would have. He stole away the parts of people that mattered the most, Mercury thought, the stone wolf in the cuff of his pants thunking against his ankle, the parts that made them worth something. And as for Emerald’s Semblance… even when she wasn’t using her illusions, she was good, so dangerously good, at making him see the world the way she wanted him to see it. Emerald was convincing, with her hopeful smiles and her quiet jabs, and so was her Semblance.

And she loved him.

The bullhead touched down.

For their first job this morning, Mercury had had to lure the guy out into the woods—he didn’t try to warn him about what was coming, this time. Watching Dad kill people felt bad enough. He couldn’t afford to be actively rooting for those people while it happened.

This morning’s job had been one of Dad’s regular ones, just a request from the Tabards, Dad’s least-hated contacts in Vale’s sprawling organized crime network. The afternoon’s job had come straight from the Something.

Midvale was a decent-sized, well-to-do village three hours west of Vale by bullhead. The village had made it out beyond the kingdoms for so long because it had a dedicated task force of six Huntsmen who patrolled the woods around Midvale in groups of two every day. They were good at keeping the Grimm population from getting too high, yeah, but also at keeping the villagers under their protection calm and happy and unafraid, which meant the Grimm barely paid the place any mind.

The Something wanted Dad to change that.

Mercury’s only job was to loiter in the village’s bakery and send Dad a scroll message when the Huntsmen sent out a search party to look for the missing patrol. If Dad did his job right, and face it, Dad always did his job right, they’d find one of their companions dead, and another maimed badly enough that they’d never walk again—but not so badly that they couldn’t tell their friends and their village about the monster that had attacked them, not so badly that they couldn’t spread panic and terror to everyone they touched.

Before the search party got back to the village, the Blacks would be long gone, flying back to Vale.

The doors of the bullhead opened, and Dad pulled a mask down over his face and hair.

“Tell me when it’s done,” he said. “If you’re not too stupid to find the right letters on your scroll.”

And Mercury had to bite his tongue to keep from snapping that he wasn’t stupid, that his friend had a dictionary entry to prove it, but he just nodded and hopped out of the bullhead, following the wide dirt road down to the village while Dad melted into the trees, seeking out the patrol.

Axcross Bakery—which Mercury had _definitely not_ been mentally referring to as “Asscrack Bakery”—was the impromptu center of operations for the Huntsmen and Huntresses of Midvale. Any search party that formed would gather there, which meant Mercury would be there, too. He even had a few lien loaded on the mission scroll so he could buy things and not look suspicious.

The bakery was set in a cottage-like, two-story building. The owners probably lived above the shop. Mercury brushed through the green front door, and the smell of butter and baking made his stomach growl. Dad hadn’t left him any time for breakfast, and it was now well past lunch.

It also reminded him of the fried cookies he and Emerald had bought at the Vytal festival when they were ten, and that memory made his stomach hurt in a completely different way.

He’d thought, stupidly, that once he knew he could never see her again, she’d leave his thoughts. That he’d be safe from worrying about her. But he just kept seeing her doubled over in sobs on that rooftop, looking like her heart had shattered in her chest, and what if it had? What if he’d broken her? His nightmares hadn’t gone away—but instead of his father killing Emerald, he was doing it himself now, watching that look of shock and betrayal spark in her eyes as his finger pulled the trigger.

Emerald didn’t deserve the threat of Marcus Black. But he couldn’t help feeling like she hadn’t deserved to have someone she loved tear her apart, either.

Someone she _loved._

His mind had been spinning on that problem for weeks now, but the constant, crushing anxiety of sharing a house with Dad kept him from landing on a solution. He was trapped like a rat—Dad kept the windows nailed shut, the door deadbolted from the outside, whenever he left. It was suffocating, like Dad’s boot pressing down on his chest in the night.

“Just a minute!” Came a shout from the kitchen, and Mercury startled toward the counter because he was supposed to look _normal,_ damnit, and staring into the beyond with a stricken expression was probably not gonna fit the bill.

He shuffled toward the glass counter by the register, staring down at the pastries and the carefully iced cupcakes and the homemade fudge. Em would want one of everything.

He found himself pulling the little stone wolf out of the cuff of his pants, fidgeting with it on the surface of the counter.

Why would she love him, anyway? It was a mistake, obviously. It had gotten her hurt. Loving somebody as screwed up as Mercury was didn’t make any sense. But Emerald had said it. Sounded like she’d meant it, too.

Maybe she didn’t, anymore, after what he’d done. That would be better for her.

“You okay there?” Mercury looked up to see a tall man with dark pink hair and a matching apron watching him from the big interior window between the counter and the kitchen.

_So much for normal._

“Yeah,” said Mercury, trying to wipe that deer-in-headlights look from his face. “Just having trouble deciding.” He recognized the guy from Dad’s files—Vardan Roosevelt, one of the six Huntsmen of Midvale and the co-owner of the ~~Asscrack~~ Axcross Bakery. That scar over his eye was even more badass in person.

“Well, my croissants didn’t rise quite right this morning, but I can always, in good conscience, recommend the cheese Danish or the monkey muffin.” The guy pointed, in turn, to a sort of flaky, buttery-looking abomination and then to a lumpy, cinnamon-coated abomination.

“I’ll take both,” said Mercury, slapping his scroll down on the counter. The muffin was huge. Emerald would probably be willing to trade a kidney for it. He went back to fidgeting with the wolf while Vardan set the pastries on a plate and slid them over to him.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” said Vardan, and Mercury did mind, but he wasn’t about to blow his cover by being an asshole, “what have you got there?” He nodded at the wolf.

Mercury shrugged and held it up for Vardan to inspect. “My friend gave it to me.”

“That’s really sweet.” Vardan backed up a step with an apologetic smile. “But I probably shouldn’t touch it. My Semblance, it lets me see all the emotions connected to the objects I touch, and it’s a little tricky to switch off. I’d hate to intrude.”

And part of Mercury wanted to laugh because that sounded like the most useless Semblance he’d ever heard of. Guy was lucky he wasn’t facing down Dad—but then again, having a Semblance you couldn’t use in a fight might be better if you were fighting Dad, right?

But part of him—the part that kept thinking thoughts that seemed to belong more to Emerald than to himself—was curious. He didn’t know how Emerald felt. Hell, he didn’t even know how _he_ felt. But this guy would.

“Actually,” he found himself saying, “I’m kinda on the outs with her right now, and I don’t know… how to be okay with that. If—if you wouldn’t mind taking a look.” He set the wolf on the table and folded his hands under his arms. The last thing he needed was Vardan touching his gloves and understanding why they were there.

Vardan shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind at all…?” He trailed off, waiting for a name, and Mercury had at least had the forethought to make one up this time.

“Slate,” he said.

“Slate,” said Vardan, “I don’t mind. Heck, I’m surprised that’s not why you came in the first place. Kids come down from the school a lot around Valentine’s Day and have me scan their cards to figure out who actually likes them.” He chuckled. “Which can get a little awkward, I’ll admit, but I believe that openness is best in the long run.” He stretched his hand down toward the wolf. “You sure?”

Mercury nodded. “I’m sure.”

He was just like Emerald, wasn’t he? Trying to find parents in places he had no business trying to find them. Gods, he was pathetic.

 _Em’s not pathetic,_ a small voice in his head protested.

Vardan closed his hand around the wolf, and a little flare of berry-colored aura surrounded it. He winced.

 _“Brothers,_ kid, you’re carrying around a lot of angst in here.”

“ _I_ could have told me that,” Mercury grumbled.

“Patience,” said Vardan, holding up a finger in a pompous sort of way that made Mercury snicker.

Mercury’s patience ran out in about four seconds. “C’mon,” he snapped. “Just tell me.”

“Yeah, I think I can untangle…” Vardan sighed. “Slate, her self-esteem is… not great. She’s lonely and hurt and _really_ confused. Part of her feels like it’s missing. But there’s still—” he weighed the wolf in his hand, considering his next words carefully—“a fondness. I think you can fix this, but you gotta move fast.”

“I don’t think I can,” Mercury said, looking down at the counter, “fix it. I don’t think she—I don’t think I—” he struggled to find the right words—“I’m not worth the trouble.”

“I can tell you think that,” said Vardan, gesturing with the wolf. “I mean, we all hate ourselves at least a little bit when we’re twelve, but _you_ —Slate, are you okay? At home?”

“Yeah,” Mercury said quickly. Too quickly. He took a bite of the Danish, which fucking ruled. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Vardan set the wolf down and stared hard at him. Quietly, Mercury shifted one foot to the side, so he could run if anything went south.

“A lot of the things that my husband touched when we were kids, they came away feeling like that.” He pointed at the wolf. “He had parents that didn’t like who he was, and it hurt him. They hurt him. So, I keep an eye out for the kids who don’t seem to like who they are.”

“Home’s fine,” Mercury said, shoulders falling into the familiar lie. “I just—I’m screwed up, and she shouldn’t have to deal with that. She’ll—she’ll be happier with me gone.”

Vardan shrugged. “Speaking as someone who married a guy who thought he was pretty screwed up, I think you probably make her happier than you think you do.”

And that was it, Mercury was drawing a line in the sand, he needed to stop relating to Dad’s targets. Even if he was sneakily relieved that this guy wasn’t in the patrol group, that he was here and safe in the village bakery, dispensing dumb advice to the local kids.

Mercury snatched the wolf off of the counter and shoved it back in his pocket. “So.” He prodded the muffin with a finger. “This have actual monkeys in it?”

Vardan seemed to get the message, backed up a step from the counter. He chuckled. “I think they call it that ‘cause it looks like it was made _by_ monkeys, not _of_ them.”

“Hm.” Mercury tore off a piece of it and ate it. It was so sugary it almost made his eyes water, and he felt willing to spill blood in its name. “I’d eat this whole thing even if it _was_ made of monkeys.”

Vardan beamed. “I’m glad to hear it! I’ll be in the back working on a cranberry cake, so just holler if you need anything.”

  
“Will do,” said Mercury.

Through the kitchen window, his eyes tracked the ingredients Vardan reached for, the amounts of them that he scooped into the bowl. He’d thought, before, of cooking something for Emerald and bringing it to her, but there would be no way to smuggle it out of the house without Dad knowing about it.

_It’s such a dumb normal thing to want, but she’d be so happy._

_And Dad would kill me._

And sitting there, at that counter, with half a cheese Danish in his mouth, Mercury was suddenly, blisteringly furious, for once at someone other than himself. The life he wanted with Emerald might be kind of silly, sure, but it was also _completely fucking normal._ It wasn’t the kind of life that a monster would want, and Mercury _did_ want it, so much that it made his chest hurt.

Mercury wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t going to just turn around one day and decide to swing at Emerald. She loved him. He wanted her to be happy. Monsters didn’t want people to be happy.

No. The only reason he and Em couldn’t have a nice, boring life like Vardan and his husband did was Marcus Black.

Mercury had hurt Emerald because of that piece of shit. He had _hurt_ _Emerald._

Oh gods, he’d really fucked up.

To keep down the fury, he made himself focus on the bowl of ingredients in Vardan’s hands, the calm step-by-step process of it.

“What did you just add?” he asked. Maybe, just to piss Dad—no. _Marcus._ Marcus hadn’t earned “Dad”—off, he could make some. Marcus would flip his lid at a food that fluffy and lacking in protein manifesting in his kitchen. And thinking about that would keep Mercury from spontaneously combusting from rage in this nice guy’s place of work.

“Are you trying to steal my trade secrets, Slate?” Vardan asked, the corner of his mouth that Mercury could see turning up in a smile.

“Mayyybe,” said Mercury.

“Orange peel. Zested. Gives it a little extra something.” He smiled to himself. “It’s the little stuff that makes it worthwhile.”

Mercury thought of the awestruck look on Emerald’s face when they were ten and she’d held a piece of sushi up to the sunlight, and silently agreed.

After that, Vardan loudly recited each ingredient and its quantity as he added it. Mercury committed them all to memory while he finished his pastries.

When Vardan slid the completed loaf into the oven, Mercury gave in to curious, Emerald-tinted part of himself and said, “So, your husband works here with you?”

Vardan smiled. “Yeah. Most days. He drew this afternoon’s patrol and couldn’t help me with the croissants. That’s probably why they came out all dumpy. He has a way with them.”

The pastries had turned to lead in Mercury’s stomach. Trying to keep his voice from going too thin, he said, “Your husband’s a Huntsman?”

“Yeah, just like me,” said Vardan, with the easy grin of someone who had no fucking clue that their spouse was probably in the process of being killed or dismembered by an assassin. “He and his sister are the best in town. Hm.” Vardan checked his watch. “Time flies! They’re an hour late.” He shook his head. “If he’s gotten sidetracked trying to climb something tall again, I _swear._ He’s missed the two-hour limit for the search party twice this year already, and it’s Camille and Rhoda’s honeymoon, so I do _not_ look forward to calling them out of their house, annnnd I have overshared.”

Mercury was slowly backing toward the door, his stomach cold. “Oh, no, it’s cool,” he said. “I just have to go now. Good luck!”

He was gone before Vardan had a chance to say goodbye.

He darted around the corner of the shop and slumped down against the wall, breathing hard because there was nothing in the world that Marcus Black didn’t have the power to ruin. In two hours’ time, that bakery would reek of blood and panic, and there was nothing Mercury could do to stop that from happening, not now.

He wished he didn’t care. He wasn’t supposed to care. But apparently he was now the kind of person who got upset about the fact that the croissants might always be lumpy because the guy who made them best was cold in the ground.

He was pretty sure he had Emerald to thank for that. If he didn’t know her—maybe he’d be okay with what Marcus was doing. Maybe it would hurt less.

But he did know Em. He knew what it was like to care. He knew what it was like to have someone love him, and that wasn’t the kind of thing he could just un-know. He’d been stupid to think he could go back to being the person he was before her. That kid hadn’t been much more than a bunch of Dad’s platitudes in a scarred little suit.

He was stronger, now, than that kid would ever be.

Mercury stood up and plunged back into the bakery. “I think you should go now,” he said, breathless, before Vardan could even turn to face him. “There are weird sounds from the woods, and I think—I think there’s trouble.”

It wouldn’t do much. But it would steal a little time from Marcus, and maybe, maybe that would be enough. If Mercury gave the Huntsmen a head start before he texted…

Vardan frowned.

 _Stupid,_ Mercury thought. There was no reason for a fully trained Huntsman to take some dumb kid he’d just met seriously.

But then, Vardan nodded and slid the apron off over his head. When he walked back through the door of the kitchen, a gleaming, re-curved bow and a quiver of arrows were slung over his shoulder, and there was a hard, determined look in his eye.

He raised a scroll to his ear. “Pick up,” he muttered. “Pick up—ah! Camille! I’m _so_ sorry—yes, I know what week it is—Camille, I was your _best man_. Look, there’s trouble, all right? Chrys and Melina are late—yeah, I _know_ he probably just fell off Eagle’s Beak again, but this time he might have actually broken something, and if the Grimm—” his face drew up in a pained, frightened expression that made Mercury avert his eyes.

“Thank you—Get geared up, I’ll come to you.” Vardan hung up and started for the door. He stopped before he got there and turned to Mercury with a look of gratitude that Mercury had never thought he’d see on a grown-up.

“Slate,” he said. “Thank you for telling me.”

Mercury nodded, a tight feeling in his throat.

He let himself wait ten minutes before he picked up his scroll and texted, slowly, letter by letter, “Search party assembled early. Rolling out.” He read it five times to make sure he didn’t have any letters switched, then pressed “Send” and bolted out of town with a slowly rising headache.

Maybe, when he got to the bullhead, Marcus wouldn’t be there. Maybe Vardan and his team had gotten to their partners in time.

When Mercury crested the hill they’d parked the bullhead behind, his heart dropped with a _thud._

Dad—no, Marcus—was there waiting, cleaning blood off of his garotte wire. Blood that probably belonged to Vardan’s husband.

Mercury scowled. “So. Which lucky contestant got the wheelchair?”

Marcus didn’t even look up. “The woman was their leader. Best to have her dead. And the guy? Well, he raised a fuss, but there wasn’t much he could do about it with a broken C-2. He’s not walking again. I’d eat my own gun if it was me.”

Mercury swallowed down bile.

Marcus glanced up at him. “Started to hear their search party on the way out. Moved faster than I thought they would. You happen to know why that was?”

Mercury couldn’t keep the bile down anymore. His eyes narrowed. “They wanted to make sure their friends were okay. Can’t _imagine_ why that is. Maybe because they aren’t _fucking monsters_ like you are.”

Marcus’s face seemed to turn to stone, petrified by a calm, ocean-like fury. The old scars on Mercury’s hands smarted and made his fingers twitch.

“If you’re going soft,” he said, “I can beat that out of you.”

And it would have been smart to be quiet, but Mercury was too angry to be smart. “And I’ll keep getting up until I can put you in the ground, you sick piece of—”

Marcus’s garotte wire coiled around his ankle and yanked Mercury off his feet, and the second his back hit the ground and the air went out of his lungs, the electricity dust lit up the wire, and he was screaming. Every muscle in his body seized, his heart stuttering and pumping panic through his arteries. His brain was on fire, and the world wasn’t anything more than a blaze of light and pain.

Then blackness.

* * *

Every Saturday, Emerald checked back at the bank to see if Mercury would have a change of heart.

Five Saturdays in, he still hadn’t.

Emerald wasn’t sure what she’d do if she ever saw him again.

Today, when he didn’t show, she made tracks toward the LargeMart. Maybe, if she could do all the same things she’d done when they were together, that hollow feeling in her chest would shrink.

She hadn’t seen Lavender and Daily in a few days. Lavender checked up on her at least twice a week, but Emerald couldn’t bring herself to seek them out. She had trusted Mercury more than she’d ever trusted herself, and he’d left her without so much as a backward glance. She wasn’t going to give her new friends the chance to do the same.

She had, however, run by Tukson’s and spent all the last of her stolen lien from the mall on his highest-grade tearjerkers. Crying over books kept that scary, calloused feeling from taking over too much of her heart.

The LargeMart was busy today, and with her distinctive hair tucked up under her bandana, it wasn’t too hard for Emerald to blend in. It had been two months since the mall robbery. Surely any manhunt—girlhunt?—had to be over by now.

She didn’t have Mercury’s cart for cover, so she grabbed her own and the wallet of a lady who was spending _way_ too much time inspecting the cantaloupes for signs of wear. The woman didn’t so much as look up, and Emerald smiled to herself.

_Well, at least there’s one thing I’m still good at._

She picked up one of pretty much everything that wouldn’t need to be cooked, and, whenever she found an aisle that was empty, she’d break into a run, pushing the cart as fast as it could go and then hopping up onto the rail to be swept along in the breeze.

It wasn’t the same.

Cypress was still there at her usual register, and Emerald would be lying if she said she wasn’t so, _so_ happy to see her. Mercury was probably right that it was stupid of her to like Cypress so much, but she was the only nice adult who’d actually stayed a part of Emerald’s life for more than a year.

Even if that was only because Emerald regularly cornered her at her place of work.

Still, the smile that lit up Cypress’s face when Emerald’s cart rolled down her aisle seemed real enough.

“Emerald!” she said. “I’ve missed you!” She frowned. “But I _have_ got something to ask you.”

Emerald hesitated while setting a gallon of water on the conveyor belt. “Yeah?”

“I can’t help but notice that eight weeks ago, a police bulletin went out telling all retail workers to be on alert for a green-haired thief, and you vanished. And now you’re back. And you’re covering your hair.”

Emerald shrank. Cypress must be so disappointed, and she’d want Emerald gone, too, just like Mercury had.

“So, I’m very glad to see that you’re taking at least a couple of precautions to avoid capture.” Emerald looked up to see Cypress’s green eyes gleam with mischief.

“You’re not mad?” Emerald whispered.

“Honey, this place robs me blind every day with how little it pays me. I don’t even get dental. My nicest regular may as well take a little of it back.”

Emerald blinked hard. She was _not_ going to cry in the checkout aisle, even if it felt like something in her chest was thawing. She started thunking granola bars down on the conveyor belt.

“You all right?” Cypress asked. “Where’s that boy of yours? Mercury, isn’t it? He came to see me the week the bulletin went out, but I haven’t seen him since.”

“He’s—” Emerald fumbled with an apple—“he’s not really ‘of mine’ anymore.” Her voice shrank. “He left. He told me he didn’t want to be friends.”

Cypress crossed her arms, a line forming between her eyebrows. “Well, that’s awful stupid of him.”

Emerald recoiled. “No! Merc’s not stupid! I—I’ve been stealing from you. I make trouble. I—”

“You stop that right this second.” Cypress’s voice was sharp, and Emerald froze. What had she done wrong this time? “Don’t you say another word against my favorite customer.”

“But I—”

“Zip it!” Cypress leaned over the counter. “I’m older than you, and you’re gonna listen to me. You have been sweet as pie to me every time you’ve come to see me since you were this high.” Cypress held up a hand a little below Emerald’s shoulder. “And I can tell you for free that that angry outkingdom hick was _so darned lucky_ to have your smiley little face next to his. He was so _rude,_ but I put up with all his crap because he had enough sense to look at you like you were the first bit of sunshine he’d ever seen. So, if he was stupid enough to forget that, it’s his loss, not yours. You hear me?”

Emerald fidgeted with a loc of her hair, not quite ready to exhale. “You really don’t think I did anything wrong?”

“Honey, the person who does the hurting is always the one that’s wrong. Whatever split him up from you, I’m willing to bet ten to one, is his stupid and not yours.”

“Oh.” Emerald let that sink in for a moment. She’d told Mercury once that he never needed to worry about owing her debts, but she had always, always felt like she owed him, for making space in his world for her, for keeping her from being completely alone. Only, he’d been alone, too, hadn’t he? No friends, no candy, just training, training, training.

“Thank you,” she said, setting her last few items on the conveyor belt. “I—I never thought of it that way.”

Cypress shrugged, scanning the items deftly and sliding them into the bags. “Sometimes, it’s a lot easier to be nice to other people than it is to be nice to yourself.” She smiled. “Now, would you like to hand me a little bit of someone else’s money so you can pay for this?”

That night, Emerald lay awake, thinking, trying to puzzle out why Mercury might have made a mistake that big, but she just wound up feeling hurt and angry and torn up on the inside.

She sat up. One of those feelings might be useful. Mercury had taught her that anger, in a fight, could be fuel, as long as you were careful with it.

_“Yeah, a pickpocket with no transcript’s gonna get into Beacon.”_

Emerald threw that sentence into the tank and got to work. She’d saved the pink lady without him, and she could do even more if she had the right tools.

She spent the next four days casing a pawnshop downtown, its glass walls, the time when its clerk took smoke breaks, the placement of the two security cameras, the giant display of hideous old-fashioned straw dolls at the center of the room, and, most importantly, the antique set of dueling revolvers hanging on the wall behind the cashier, old enough that they had loops where you could attach a bayonet.

They were perfect.

Emerald sprang her plan on a Tuesday evening, five minutes before the clerk’s last smoke break in advance of the weird rush of night people who came to trade in things they wanted to slide under the radar. The clerk looked skinny and tired, and a little twitchy as he waited for his break. He’d be impatient to get all his transactions done so that he could slip outside for a cigarette. That impatience would make him sloppy.

One of the cameras pointed straight at the front entrance, the other at the counter where the clerk worked and the two coveted revolvers hanging behind him. Emerald’s first order of business was to take out those cameras—her Semblance might be able to fool people, but it would be useless against machines.

She’d been buying little trinkets and knickknacks over the past few days, so the clerk just nodded when he saw her. There were five other people in the store, enough that when the dust cleared, no one would be quite sure who to blame.

Emerald made her way toward the back right corner of the shop, in a blind spot between the two cameras. There was nothing of importance, really, in that blind spot, except for the only smoke alarm in the shop. Its face had been torn off and the little cartridge of electricity dust that powered it removed, probably so that the clerk could sneak a couple smokes on the job without getting caught.

Emerald had, two days earlier, picked up a mini flashlight from the other side of the store, and wandered into the smoke detector corner, leaving it in the blind spot. A day after that, she’d wandered into the same corner with an ancient almanac that had paper so thin and dry that it was almost transparent.

She felt a little bad about killing a book in the name of her criminal exploits, but it seemed to have lived a long and eventful life.

Lastly, she’d brought over an old-fashioned nightlight, a tin cylinder with cutouts of the moon and stars, and, at its center, a tiny crystal of raw fire Dust.

She unscrewed the end of the flashlight and let the tiny Dust cannister slide into her hand. She clicked it into place on the fire alarm and closed its plastic face. Anyone who saw this part would assume it was pretty innocent, but no one saw. The clerk was at a bad angle, craving a smoke, and used to her presence. Half the other shoppers were hypnotized by the awful straw dolls. The others were browsing by the window on the far side of the shop.

Emerald picked up the nightlight, activated the fire Dust with a flicker of aura, and then let out a shriek like she’d been unexpectedly burned. The other customers whirled to see her drop the cylinder, to see the little ball of fire dislodge itself from the tin prison of the nightlight—Emerald _definitely hadn’t_ removed it from the nightlight and loosened it beforehand—and float down onto the dry, withered pages of the almanac.

Suddenly, there was a much, much larger ball of fire directly under the smoke detector. And there was a green-haired girl, seemingly out of her mind with fear, screaming.

Everything was going to plan.

Keeping up the front of complete hysteria, Emerald picked up the flaming almanac and hurled it away from her, shrieking and shrieking and shrieking, like someone who had come unglued enough to pick up an on-fire almanac. Her aura repelled the flames.

And then, it really just looked like a stroke of bad luck when the almanac collided with the old straw dolls and burst into a pillar of flame that licked up to the metal sprinkler heads on the ceiling. Smoke roiled out of the inferno, and Emerald, the clerk, and the other customers fled for the exit through the blinding cloud. The smoke, it seemed, wouldn’t reach quite far enough to cloud the cameras.

But then the smoke detector activated the sprinkler system. Both cheap, crappy cameras fizzled, and as the flames went out, the smoke flared all the way to the windows. All the customers and the clerk were blinded and hacking, but Emerald’s aura shielded her from the smoke.

She’d memorized the way from her corner to the counter by touch. Vaulting over the side and grabbing the pistols was a simple matter. Grabbing a baggy jacket that had been hanging untouched by the door forever, pulling it around her shoulders, and slipping the pistols on under it was a little trickier.

She managed all of it in fifteen seconds, and then she was standing out on the street corner, coughing with the other patrons as smoke billowed around them. The grown-ups patted her on the back and said, _Poor thing,_ and badmouthed the clerk for leaving the nightlight unattended.

Once the fire department was on its way, the customers started to disperse, and Emerald melted into the shadows beside the building, then ran back to her terrace at top speed.

When she was there, she unfurled the jacket on the floor and laid the revolvers down on top of it. She’d need rounds, at some point, and blades, and chains, and chambers for the chains, and she’d need to space those thefts out over weeks, but it was a start, the first step on her path to Beacon.

No Semblance. No Mercury. But she’d made the first step all the same.

Even alone, she was something.

* * *

Mercury woke up sprawled on his mattress like Da—Marcus—had thrown him there, with no idea of how much time had passed.

It was bright in his room, so it had to be day—but which day? How long had he been out? What had—?

In a flash, he remembered. Vardan. The tea cake. The lightning that had ripped his vision to shreds.

He’d never seen Marcus so angry—and yet. He felt stronger than he had when their bullhead had touched down in Midvale. Marcus was angry because Mercury wasn’t like him, and _that,_ Mercury decided as he sat up and pressed a hand to his aching head, was something to be proud of.

He wasn’t a monster. Marcus didn’t own him.

Figuring he couldn’t really piss Marcus off any more than he already had, he leaned forward and locked his bedroom door.

Marcus didn’t own him.

There were only so many acts of rebellion Mercury could commit in his bare, empty room, but he’d do his best.

He settled on cutting the sleeves off of his jacket. He shuffled over to his first-aid kit and picked up the pair of scissors he used to cut bandages. With them, he hacked off the right arm of his jacket at the shoulder and the left one around where his bicep would be, just past where the collage of cigar burns on his shoulder came to an end.

He nodded, pretty happy with his work, all things considered, and yanked the altered jacket over his head. It felt good, freer. Like he had less to hide. He started slicing the sleeves into long, thin strips of cloth that he could wrap around the more prominent scars and bruises if he ever got out of this godsdamned house again.

After that, he figured the biggest fuck-you he had left was falling back asleep. So he did.

Sometime after that, he woke up to the sound of the door flying off its hinges, and he felt a brief wrench of pain for the only semblance of privacy he’d ever had. His training kicked in well enough that he was able to roll out of bed and onto his feet with his aura raised before Marcus’s baton could shatter his nose. But his room wasn’t much more than a ten-by-ten box, and with Marcus in the doorway, there was nowhere to run.

In the end, there were eight new bullet holes in the wall of Mercury’s bedroom, and Mercury himself was left hunched against the wall, cradling a fractured wrist.

Marcus made a sound of disgust. _“How?_ How could my blood make something as pathetic as you?” He spat the words, literally spat them, Mercury could feel it land in his hair.

“This city’s made you soft, boy, and I’m going to set that straight. When you’re not on missions with me, you’re going to be right here in this house where you belong. No errands. No walks. And if you even _think_ of leaving—”

Marcus’s hand shot out and closed around Mercury’s injured wrist. It squeezed, and bursts of white exploded across Mercury’s vision. He bit down on his lip to keep from screaming.

“—you know what I can do to you.” At that, Marcus smiled, and the rage and pain made Mercury dizzy. His grip tightened, and the scream Mercury had been holding down broke free as Marcus’s knee slammed into his gut, doubling him over and making him wheeze, and—

 _“What._ The _hell._ Are you doing.” It wasn’t a question, and the voice that said it was low and unfamiliar, thick with barely contained rage.

Mercury looked up, and through the haze of tears, he saw the Something, floating in the doorway like a specter, its ruddy tendons brushing the carpt. Marcus froze. His grip on Mercury’s wrist went slack. Gasping, Mercury slumped to the floor, a hand braced over his stomach.

“Nothing that’s any business of yours,” Marcus snarled.

Glaring out of the Something was a square-jawed man with dark green eyes. “I’m of the opinion that when you brutalize a child, you lose the right to have your own business.”

“Now, now, Hazel.” And this voice was familiar, the Atlesian slimeball who’d given him his Vytal tickets and listened with a smirk while Mercury told him about the arena’s defenses. “Marcus is one of our best. As long as he remains one of our best, we’re a bit… flexible about his activities outside of his work.”

_“That boy is—”_

“Not your problem, Hazel. I believe I’ll take this meeting from here.”

There was a grunt of disapproval, the sound of footsteps. Mercury cautiously pressed a finger to his wounded wrist only to recoil with a cringe of pain. Marcus was too occupied with his boss to notice.

“Apologies, Marcus,” the Atlesian was saying. “Hazel has rather a soft heart under all that bulk, and it can make him… unprofessional. Now, I suppose we should get down to brass tacks. We’re stepping up destabilization, which means that you and Callows—”

Marcus let out a drawn-out groan.

“I know your personalities are not particularly complimentary, but orders are orders. You’ll be hitting some villages in Mistral—it should require about two weeks, so pack accordingly. You’re going to be a busy man for the foreseeable future, Marcus. I’m afraid your little nestling will have to get used to fending for himself. Now, the bullhead will be waiting for you at sundown. Chop chop!”

The Something vanished down the hall.

Marcus let out a grunt of disgust and prodded Mercury with his toe. “You’re what I make you, boy. Nothing else.”

Wordless, Mercury nodded, anything to make Marcus leave.

“Good,” said Marcus. The bastard thought he’d won. Maybe he had.

Mercury wanted to be strong. He wanted to be able to shrug and walk off Marcus’s punches and then put a boot in his stomach. But he was stuck in a body that ached when it was wounded and shook when it was scared, and he wasn’t sure how much more that body could take.

While Marcus packed, Mercury struggled to get his breath back, the sharp pain in his wrist killing every good thought that tried to cross his mind.

Marcus was never going to let him leave.

He was dizzy and shaking, and his wrist _hurt_ , and he wanted to fall down and not get up again.

Under the pounding of his head and his wrist, something in Mercury’s chest went cold and tightened. _No._ There was nothing worth living for here, but he’d be damned if he let that kill him. Emerald was out there, loving him, thinking he hated her. He couldn’t just let Marcus—

“Ration your food,” Marcus said on the way past him to the door. Mercury barely heard him. “It’s gonna have to stretch a long way.” He chuckled. The front door opened and shut. The deadbolt outside of it slammed home.

For the first time in weeks, he was alone, safe from Marcus breathing down his neck. He could think, now. He could decide what he was going to do with the time he had.

He was going to make good on the promise he’d made before Marcus had electrocuted him, he decided. He was going to keep getting up.

Because there was a boring, normal life waiting for him outside these walls, and a smart, lonely, decidedly un-boring pickpocket, if he could just find a way out.

If he hadn’t already ruined that future for himself.

Mercury set his jaw and dragged himself over to the first-aid kit. He couldn’t beat Marcus, but he could splint his wrist. He snapped the kit open with his good hand, pulled out the good solid stick he’d found back at the cabin that he always used for splints. He unrolled enough bandages to hold it, but the second his hand put pressure on his wrist, he hissed in pain and something in his mind shouted, _I can’t do this!_

He closed his eyes, then, and lined the splint back up.

“I can do this,” he whispered, moving his fingers over the wound and figuring out where the bones lined up. The pain of it made sweat break out on his forehead. “I can do this.” He started wrapping the bandage to hold everything in place, nearly crying out when he wound it too tight.

Another deep breath.

“I can do this. Emerald loves me.”

It was the first time he’d let himself say her name in weeks. He set the bandage, got it right.

“Emerald loves me.”

Maybe, after everything he’d done, he didn’t deserve to be loved. But he sure as shit didn’t deserve what Marcus was doing to him, either.

And Emerald didn’t deserve to think her best friend hated her. She didn’t deserve to be alone and scared again.

“I’ll fix it,” he said, even though nobody could hear. “I’ll fix it.”

He inspected his hastily splinted hand. It should heal okay once his aura got to work on it.

What he’d done to Emerald wasn’t the kind of thing he could heal with a splint.

To the room, he said, “How the fuck am I going to fix it?”

He stood up, still shaky, his thoughts sluggish with pain and drowsiness. Except for the ones in Marcus’s room—no _way_ was he going near the Something in this condition—he checked every window in the house. Nailed shut. No way out without breaking them. If Marcus found Mercury gone, he’d track him down and kill Emerald, and if Marcus found him at home with a broken window, he might not track down Emerald, but whatever he’d do to Mercury didn’t bear thinking about.

So. No escape that way. The back door, like the front, was deadbolted from the outside and synced to Dad’s scroll, so he’d get a ping whenever someone unlocked it.

There wasn’t a way out.

Mercury’s fruitless search ended at the front door, and he slumped down with his back against it.

“Em, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’ll keep trying.”

With nothing else left to do, he straightened his back and started calling his aura, trying to find that stubbornness, that desire to hit back, that always let him get up again.

It wasn’t there. Something else was sitting in its place. Maura Ellwood ruffling her son’s hair. Vardan Roosevelt sliding a tea cake into an oven. Fenri running next to him under the trees. Emerald setting her little jade cat on her bookshelf.

_Huh._

_Love._

It was right there under Mercury’s ribs, and Marcus Black hadn’t been able to lay a finger on it.

Mercury smirked, the tiny victory planting silver in his chest. It took him a long time to draw it out, to direct it to his wrist, to burn away the dizziness and feel like himself again, but it happened.

_Suck it, Marcus._

Mercury tilted his head back against the door and then fell through it.

He startled with a yelp of alarm as he found himself lying on the front porch—or, his torso lying on the front porch. His legs were invisible beyond the door. He pulled them through easily, like the door wasn’t even there, and then he was sitting on the porch. Outside the house, without a trace of how he’d gotten there.

He frowned and stood up. If he couldn’t figure out a way to get back in, Marcus would—

Mercury pressed his good hand to the wood of the door. It felt solid as ever. With a little push of concentration, he slid his hand through the door, then the rest of himself. He was standing in the living room again.

Experimentally, he focused, then swept his hand toward a lamp. It went straight through without even a ripple, and that was when the excitement hit.

“Yes!” He kicked the wall in triumph, letting his foot stay solid. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Kick! Kick! Kick!

Mercury had a Semblance, one that would let him sneak in and out of this prison like a motherfucking ghost, and Marcus was nowhere around to take it.

It felt like an answered wish, something out of Emerald’s fairy tales, like this new power was a gift from her, specifically.

He would thank her in person.

If Marcus’s Semblance meant that he was an asshole, and Emerald’s meant that she was persuasive, good at imagining, then Mercury’s meant that he was untouchable, that there was something inside of him that Marcus could never beat.

Mercury grinned and went to raid the fridge. He had a lot to fix, but a gliding, unfamiliar feeling of power ran through all his limbs and made him feel taller.

Marcus didn’t own him.

He could do this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mercury's Semblance is here! And he gets to keep it! There are so many amazing headcanons floating around as to what it might have been, and getting to come up with my own version was one of the most creatively rewarding parts of writing this fic. I'm excited to hear what you guys think of it!
> 
> And you can tune in next week for ::checks smudged writing on hand, double-checks to make sure my eyes aren't playing tricks on me, grins, raises fists in triumph:: Fluff! FLUFF! I can't express how excited I am to get to share wholesome, non-angst content again.  
> On that note, I'm delighted to inform you that Marcus Black will not be appearing on-page for more than ~2 paragraphs in the next fifty thousand words of this fic. I think we all need a break.
> 
> I'm so grateful to you guys for hanging in there during this darker, kind of experimental arc. I know it hasn't been an easy read, and it's been as hard for me to post these chapters as it's been for you to read them. It's been a rough few weeks in the world at large, and getting to share this story with you, even at its darkest points, has really made those weeks more bearable. <3
> 
> tl;dr You guys are the best and the angst is at an end. :)


	13. Mind and Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mercury works to set things right with Emerald.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the arc finale! I'm leaving a recap here for anybody who understandably skipped over the darkness of the last few chapters. Everybody else, happy reading! Folks who are dropping back in, if this recap misses anything or there's confusion, feel free to ask me about it in the comments.
> 
> Recap: After going on his first mission with Marcus and watching him kill a Huntress, Mercury decided it wasn't safe for Emerald to stay in his life and broke off his friendship with her in the cruelest terms possible to try and keep her out of Marcus's reach. Emerald's new friends Lavender and Daily were there for her, but after Mercury left, she spent a lot of time alone, becoming more independent, taking down a mugger, and stealing the revolvers that will let her build a new weapon. Meanwhile, Mercury turned on Marcus during a mission, realized leaving Emerald was a mistake, and, when Marcus left him imprisoned in their house, he unlocked his Semblance, the ability to turn intangible and walk through walls. Now, he just has to find a way to patch things up with his best friend...

When Mercury’s aura had been at work long enough for him to take off the splint on his wrist—when Marcus’s bullhead was well on its way to Mistral—he phased through the front door with a little grin of triumph and set off toward the LargeMart at a dead sprint.

There was part of him, a large part, that wanted to run straight to Emerald, use his Semblance to zip through every building in his way, and throw himself at her feet and apologize. But why would she have any reason to think he was telling the truth? He’d need to prove himself.

It would be okay, Mercury told himself, he was good at passing tests set by someone a lot harsher than Emerald.

As he ran through the deep purple dusk, he listed off the ingredients for the teacake he’d watched Vardan make back in Midvale.

Once he hit downtown, he angled for a gaggle of teenagers walking toward a clothing store and then crashed through them in a hurry.

“Sorry!” he shouted. “Sorry!” He was not sorry. And he’d made it through with one of their wallets.

 _Thanks, Em._ He rounded a corner at top speed and kept racing toward the LargeMart. Gods, it felt good to run, to feel the wind rushing past, to have his arms—the parts that weren’t hidden under wrappings at least—open to the sky.

It had been a long time since he’d felt weightless.

When he hit the LargeMart, he grabbed a cart and rushed through the aisles quickly enough that he _definitely_ ran over some people’s toes.

Down at one of the checkout aisles was Cypress, and Mercury hesitated. He’d never really gotten along with her—she’d always felt two steps short of asking him if he was okay, which just _infuriated_ him. But Emerald really liked her, and she seemed to really like Emerald. Maybe she’d know something about how Emerald was holding up.

He steered his cart down toward her aisle.

“Hi Cypress!” he said, trying and, he was pretty sure, failing to sound upbeat and normal.

Cypress must have known it was bullshit, too, because she crossed her arms and glowered at him.

“As an employee of LargeMart Incorporated, I’m required to help you process your items,” she said, her green eyes icy. “But as a person, I am _not_ going to be happy about it.”

Mercury ducked his head. “She’s—she’s not okay, is she?” The weightless feeling was gone again. “I really really screwed things up.”

Cypress blinked, her eyebrows rising a little. “Can’t say I expected you to admit that.”

“I know, I know, I’m a jerk,” Mercury grumbled, setting the flour and the orange and the bag of cranberries on the conveyor belt. “I just want to fix this.”

Cypress smiled. “You know, I told her you’d come to your senses.” But then her face hardened. “But I’d like you to understand something, Mercury: whatever it was that you said to her? She believed it. And she was _not_ feeling kindly toward herself.”

Mercury’s chest went tight. He had said a lot of horrible words, and if Emerald really believed them…

“I—” he shook his head—“I didn’t deserve her. I know that. That’s why I left.” He found himself looking up, understanding, for a moment, why Emerald looked at Cypress the way she did, like she held some kind of key. “Should I stay away?”

_If she says yes…_

“Oh gods, no!” Cypress said, starting to scan. “I just wanted to make it clear that if you hurt her again, I’ll spit in all your food.” She looked hard at him. “When I sent her on her way, she seemed better. But she always had the happiest little face when she was with you, and I don’t see any reason why you should take that away from her.”

She handed him his grocery bag. “Go fix it.” She almost smiled.

“I will,” he said, and he took off into the night at a run.

He figured he shouldn’t actually make the cake until early tomorrow morning, which meant he could use tonight to figure out what the hell he was going to say when he finally saw Emerald. He was great at knowing how to hurt people, but un-hurting them… how did that even work?

He slapped together a sandwich and phased out into the backyard. He didn’t know if the Something was always listening, but if it was, it would probably be less than ideal if it heard him workshopping apologies to his friend who was supposed to be dead.

It was a cool night, all the fragments of the moon turning the world silver. He climbed up into the maple and perched on a branch, trying to think as he ate. It was just like training, right? Try it and try it again until it was right. It couldn’t be that hard.

“Good afternoon, fellow criminal mastermind. I regret my recent—fuck. No.”

He chewed some more, thinking.

“Look, Emerald, I screwed up. I screwed up so bad, and it makes a lot of sense for you to hate me, so actually I’m just going to leave this cake here and throw myself out the window. Bye!”

Okay, that one was a little more promising. He decided to put a pin in it and kept trying. Maybe more casual would be better?

“Heya, Em. You’re looking, uh, person-shaped as usual—” Now _that_ one made him wish he had the ability to kick himself in the forehead.

Maybe he should move back in the other direction?

“Emerald, I—Emerald, I—” Why was this so hard? “I also—I also lo—damnit!”

What was the point? He was good at being funny and mean! Em liked being funny and mean with him! All this mushy stuff felt like overextending himself in a fight, like he was asking to get hurt.

“Look, I thought it was for your own good.”

And that one genuinely made him want to hurl himself out of the tree, because that was exactly what Marcus would say. Letting himself think the way Marcus wanted him to think—telling himself that hurting Emerald was for her own good—was the reason he was up a tree rehearsing apologies at ten o’clock at night.

Wait. Okay. He knew why he’d done it now, and he knew it in words that wouldn’t give away enough of the truth to put Em in danger. And maybe—maybe he could give Emerald a little of the truth. Just enough for her to understand.

Like the wrappings on his arms, he decided. He could find a way to tell her that he was patched together with bandages, even if he couldn’t let her know the shapes of the scars underneath.

The thoughts started to come together now, and he tacked them down in words, carefully, one by one. Once he’d strung them together in order, he practiced them, over and over, like they were a combat flip or an attack combination, until he had them as close to right as they were going to get.

Mercury slid down the tree trunk and walked back toward the house, activating his Semblance to phase through the wall of his bedroom. Now that he’d done everything he needed to, exhaustion tugged at his limbs, his wrist starting to bruise and ache again. He could rest, now. Marcus wouldn’t be here in the morning.

He collapsed in a heap on his mattress and fell asleep almost instantly. When the faint light of a slowly rising sun woke him, his wrist turned easily in spite of the bruises, and he couldn’t recall a single nightmare.

The kitchen reeked of liquor—the dining room table was littered with bottles that Mercury figured Marcus had used to drink himself out of his mind with rage when he’d dragged Mercury back from Midvale. The memories the smell called up made Mercury want to retch, but he pressed through it long enough to scramble himself some eggs and throw all the dry ingredients for the tea cake in a bowl before he had to retreat back to his room. He ate breakfast cross-legged on his bed, and he felt steadier when he was done. He took a deep breath of the clean air in his room and then headed back to the kitchen.

The smell was still clouding his head and calling up fear, but he didn’t want to touch a single one of those bottles, so he made himself focus on the food, on making his hands move in the same practiced way Vardan’s had. It felt good to make something, to know all the steps he needed to follow and how to do them right.

Once he zested the orange peel, the smell was enough to drown out the whiskey, and he could breathe easy again.

_“It’s the little things that make it worthwhile.”_

When the cake had baked for around ten minutes or so, Mercury was sure that he hadn’t screwed it up. The kitchen smelled, just a little, like Vardan’s bakery had—warm and gold and safe.

For the first time, it occurred to Mercury that Vardan’s husband might end up kind of okay, eventually, if he woke up every day next to somebody who loved him that much, in a house that smelled that safe.

If that was true, then maybe Mercury could end up kind of okay, too.

The second he pulled the cake out of the oven and flipped it out of the loaf pan—it was golden on top and a little crispy around the edges, like it was supposed to be—he lowered it into the grocery bag, hoping it would still be warm by the time he got to Emerald’s. He phased through the door and was gone.

He had one last stop to make.

Tukson’s was just opening when Mercury got there, and he hurried through the door, pressing down a swell of guilt. This was the last place he’d treated Emerald decently, and her new friends—she’d already seemed so close with them, in ways he’d never let her be close with him.

What if she didn’t need him anymore?

Tukson was standing behind the counter with a puzzled look. He shot a glance at the shop’s backroom and then looked back at Mercury, frowning.

“It’s been a while,” he said, in the tone of somebody who was trying to sound polite but didn’t really want to be.

So. Emerald had been to see him since the fight. That was good, right? If she was still reading and doing the things she liked, that was good.

“Hey,” said Mercury. Gods, what was the most not-wrong thing to say? “I, um, I get it if you don’t want to help me. I probably wouldn’t want to help me either.”

Tukson crossed his arms, still wearing that carefully neutral expression. “What do you need help with?”

“Okay,” said Mercury, crossing over to the copy of _The Countess Fiancé_ that had the weighted, readable letters, “first I’d like to buy this.” He had enough money left in the stolen wallet to do that, easily. “And then—is there any kind of book Emerald’s been into lately? Like, legends or mysteries or something?”

Tukson looked hard at him and said, “She came by a few weeks ago to clean out my stock of ‘books that are good to cry over.’”

“Oh.”

_Shit._

“What do _you_ think she’d like?” And Mercury could look at Tukson’s slightly narrowed eyes and know that that question was a test.

Mercury knew how to pass it, he hoped. He hurried back toward the front of the store, trying to find the book Emerald had shown him the day he’d left her. There! He tugged out the Vacuan fairy tale compilation, with its gold spine and unreadable curling title script.

He held it up. “She wanted this one. I—I don’t want her to miss reading it just because I screwed up.”

Tukson nodded once, a hint of a smile on his face, and Mercury knew he’d passed. “I’ll ring it up.”

If only all grown-ups were that easy to impress.

Tukson kept casting uneasy glances at the back room the whole time Mercury was checking out, but Mercury had more important things to worry about. The second he’d set the books in his bag, carefully layering them beneath the cake, he was off again.

No more stops. It was time to go find Emerald.

His heart was pounding too hard, too fast, now, even though he was just running at a jog. What if he’d hurt her so badly she couldn’t talk to him? What if she hated him? He didn’t think he’d be able to stand Em hating him, and that just made the pounding worse, because he’d _definitely_ forced her to think that he hated her. What would that have done to her? There was no way sorry would be enough. Would she want to slap him? Maybe that would even out the scales some. That would be better than her refusing to look at him at all, wouldn’t it? It’d be better than her telling him to go and never come back.

He forced himself into a sprint as he gained the fire escape on the building across from Emerald’s terrace. He wouldn’t think. He couldn’t think, or he’d turn around and run back home so that he wouldn’t have to know how much Emerald probably hated him now.

He was halfway across the roof and backing up to take a running leap when Lavender came hurtling over the side of the building to land in his way. Mercury let out a cry of alarm and was suddenly falling toward her, her damn gravity Semblance sending him plummeting down the roof.

The Semblance let go of him suddenly, and his feet found traction on the concrete again. He skidded to a halt with his throat less than an inch from the point of one of Lavender’s knives.

“You have some fucking nerve coming back here, Wolfboy,” she practically snarled.

“Good afternoon to you too,” said Mercury, because he apparently _did not know_ when to stop being an asshole. He frowned. “Wait, how the hell did you know I’d be here? Have you just been sitting under Em’s window for two months waiting to murder me?” After a moment’s thought, he added, “‘Cause I’d kind of respect that.”

Lavender rolled her eyes. “I was at Tukson’s, dumbass. I hid in the back when I saw you come in.”

Ah. That explained all the weird glances Tukson kept shooting over his shoulder.

She went on, “I did think of ambushing you outside the LargeMart, but in the end?” She shrugged. “I figured looking after Green was more important.”

“You were right,” he said. “I’m not worth stabbing.”

“You might be worth grav-shooting up to the stratosphere so you can splatter on the pavement, though.”

Okay, he’d say that to anyone who’d hurt Emerald, too. He smiled a little. “Might be. But if you let me keep my feet on the ground, I think I might be able to help her.”

“I think you’ve ‘helped’ her enough.”

“Look, Lav—”

“Do you have any _idea_ how much she talked about you?” Lavender asked. The point of her knife grazed his throat. Mercury’s aura kept it from doing any damage, but the feeling was still uncanny. “It was obnoxious, how bonkers she was about you.” Lavender glared. “And when you left her, she dropped off the face of the damn planet! She wouldn’t visit me and Daily, she wouldn’t do anything but cry, she—you don’t get to hurt her again.”

“I won’t.” He wished he sounded more sure. His chest sank.

“Not good enough.”

“I know!” Mercury snapped. “I fucking know, why do you think I left?!”

Lavender’s eyes widened. Her knife inched away from his throat.

“She knows me better than anybody,” he said, more quietly. “She’ll—she’ll know what should happen to me for what I did. And if she decides that she doesn’t want me around, you won’t have to see me again.”

“I’m liking this scenario,” said Lavender, that tough look coming back.

And if he left, Emerald would be okay. He wasn’t the only person who cared about her now. Cypress and Tukson and Lavender all forming a damn phalanx around Emerald proved it. There was something reassuring about that. Keeping Emerald safe, it wasn’t only his job anymore. She couldn’t vanish into nothing on a kidnapper’s whim like the girl he’d met almost had.

“So let me talk to her,” he said. “And if she lets me stay and I hurt her again, _please_ squash me like a bug.”

Lavender sheathed her knife and stuck out a hand. “With pleasure, Wolfboy.”

Mercury smirked as he shook it. “Thanks.” And he decided, if they were going to be friends, that he couldn’t resist messing with her just a little. He dashed toward Lavender at top speed, watching her eyes flash in alarm, then activated his Semblance and phased right through her.

“Hey!” she shouted, but he just shot a grin over his shoulder. He launched himself into the air, straight at the wall of Emerald’s terrace, and as it rushed up toward him, he phased a second time, flashing through the glass and landing on the floor beside her bedroll, nearly knocking over her pile of granola bars.

He froze, steadying himself, and then there she was—sitting in her reading corner polishing a rusty old revolver, her eyes widening as she saw him, the sunlight gleaming on her hair.

“I—” the words he’d practiced withered. She was _here._

Emerald stood up, setting the gun aside, which was probably a good sign.

“I—” he swallowed, trying to make his voice stop shaking. “It makes sense for you to hate me, and I should probably just—”

She took a step toward him, a determined look in her deep red eyes, and he braced himself for the slap.

“And I know that I can’t ever—”

She threw her arms around his middle and pulled him into a vice-tight hug.

Mercury’s brain short-circuited. This wasn’t part of the plan. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. He didn’t deserve this, hadn’t earned it, hadn’t given her his proof. And her hair still smelled like oranges. And her arms were strong, pressing into his back like she was never going to let him go. A wall in his chest crumbled, and he slumped, the shopping bag dropping to the floor as he folded his arms around her.

Marcus was there in the back of his mind, whispering that he’d ruin her, that he was ruining her now just by touching her.

_Shut up._

Emerald’s arms didn’t loosen. Her head tilted against his own.

_Shut up. She chose this. She chose me._

He hid his face in her hair, feeling suddenly ridiculous for having ever thought that she was the more breakable of the two of them.

“Missed you,” he whispered. His voice was hoarse.

Emerald’s laugh was damp, like she was close to crying. “Of course you did, idiot. I’m your best friend.” With a silly, half-hearted singsong in her voice, she added, “You _looove_ me.”

Mercury just tightened his arms around her and held her close, because she was right.

* * *

Emerald had had lots of plans for what she’d do if Mercury ever came back to her.

The first plan, right after he’d run off, had been to throw herself at his feet and apologize for everything annoying she’d ever done, ever, plus some things she wasn’t even sure she’d done wrong just for good measure.

Then she’d seen how furious Lavender was at what he’d done to her, and she’d thought, okay, maybe I don’t have to do _all_ the apologizing. The second plan had involved no actual, verbal apology, just her acting as calm and together and un-burdensome as possible, so that he’d see that she wouldn’t weigh him down anymore. And maybe, seeing that, he’d take back some of what he’d said.

And then, midway through a sleepless night with his words slicing through her head, she’d devised Plan Number Three: tell him to fuck right off.

Plan Number Three had scared her enough that she’d defaulted right back to Plan Number One until her meeting with Cypress, which yielded Plan Number Four. Plan Number Four was standing tall, looking Mercury in the eye, and demanding both an apology and an explanation. She was pretty sure that Plan Number Four was her most emotionally mature option, and though all the other plans were tempting, she was going to do her best to adhere to it.

Plans One through Four all died the second Mercury came flying through her wall with thinly veiled panic in his eyes. How he’d managed to fly through the wall didn’t even crack the top ten questions in her mind.

He didn’t look like someone who was here to rub salt in her wounds. His hair was a mess, and he was breathing hard, and the sleeves of his jacket were all sliced up and wrapped around his arms like bandages in a way that screamed, “I Am Going Through Some Shit and I Am Not Handling It Well.” He looked like someone who was ready to adopt Plan Number One.

When she set aside her revolver, she still had no idea what she was going to do. Mercury was staring at her, eyebrows drawn up in the middle like just the sight of her hurt. Like she had the power to destroy him. Maybe she did. He looked scared of her, and that, in itself, was scary.

But he’d hurt her. With a few words, he’d cut her down until she felt like nothing. He’d held this power to destroy in his hands, too, and he’d used it.

But Emerald was still here. She wasn’t nothing. She’d saved a life. She’d carried off a heist and walked away from it with more power than she’d ever had in her twelve years.

Mercury wasn’t the reason Emerald mattered. _Emerald_ was the reason Emerald mattered, and the stammering boy standing in front of her didn’t have the power to tear her down anymore.

She stood up, still with no idea of what to do with this new feeling of strength, what to do with the best friend who’d hurt her.

Mercury flinched when she took a step forward, and that settled it. Emerald didn’t want to watch him grovel, to make him beg for forgiveness. She’d promised herself, on a sleepy summer afternoon nearly three years ago that she would never, ever give him a reason to flinch. That she’d never make him regret trusting her.

He was her best friend, and she wanted him back, and he was back, and she wasn’t going to let him walk away again, and before she even quite knew what she was doing, she’d thrown her arms around him and crushed herself against his chest.

She put that new feeling of power into keeping him close, where he belonged.

Before she could panic because she’d broken one of the rules they never said aloud and grabbed him like this without asking and probably pissed him off again, the grocery bag he’d been carrying hit the floor with a thud, and his arms came up to circle her. Any fear she’d had dissolved in how good it felt to be held, and she let her head fall against his. His hair was exactly as shaggy and soft as she’d remembered.

And when he mumbled, “Missed you,” against her shoulder, she knew just what to say, because Cypress was right. He could be an idiot, and the day that she’d decided that he was _her_ idiot had probably been the luckiest of his life.

When his arms pressed her closer into his chest, she knew it had been the right thing to say.

And she knew that it was true. He _loooved_ her. A stupid grin tugged at the corners of her mouth.

They stood like that for what felt like a long time, clinging so tightly to each other that there was a squeezing feeling in Emerald’s chest, before she realized that eventually one of them was going to have to let go.

Well, Mercury had gotten to do his share of letting go, so it fell to Emerald to let her arms go slack, to shuffle out of his grip. It took him a minute to actually unwrap his arms and take a step back.

Now that they were standing here, a foot apart with two months of hurt feelings between them, Emerald had no idea what to say. From the way Mercury kept opening and closing his mouth, he was having a similar problem.

Mercury cracked the silence first. “So, uh. How’ve you been?”

Emerald decided honesty was the best policy. “I’ve been using my Semblance to run around in a Mercury suit enacting vigilante justice. And—and when you said I’d never get into Beacon, I got angry, and I stole some revolvers to prove you wrong.”

“Em, about that—” he sat down in the middle of the floor, shoulders hunched—“I owe you an apology.”

She sat down across from him. “You do.” Right. Plan Number Four. “And Merc, it can’t be crappy.”

The Mercury sitting in front of her seemed like a completely different person from the one who had ripped her guts out with a few sentences. More than an apology, she wanted an explanation, but she’d get there. One thing at a time.

“It _better_ not be crappy,” he said. “I practiced this garbage.”

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, like he was trying to recite from memory. “I fucked up. I hurt you, and that’s never going to be okay. You never have to be okay with me again. But I had to come back because I couldn’t stand knowing that you thought I hated you. I don’t hate you. I’ll never hate you.

“I thought—I knew—that I couldn’t be as good a friend as you deserve. I couldn’t—I couldn’t hug you, or have sleepovers, or play cards like Knives and Daily can, and I thought you didn’t deserve to have to deal with my shit anymore.”

He smiled weakly, and Emerald’s heart clenched.

“All the things I said to you—they were things I thought you should say to me. I figured I was dragging you down, and if you weren’t gonna be the one to cut me off—” he shrugged—“I’d have to do it myself. I thought I knew what was good for you better than you did, and that was screwed-up of me. And I let that make me feel like it was okay for me to hurt you if it meant you ended up better in the long run. If it kept you away from all my bullshit. I was wrong, and I hurt you for nothing, and not having you around, Em—” he sighed heavily—“it sucks donkey balls.”

She snickered involuntarily even as her eyes stung. “Sorry, go on.”

Mercury nodded. “Sure. You’re the boss,” he said. He frowned. “That’s what I forgot. All your fairy tales—all our cool plans. They’re all you.” He cracked a smile. “I’m really just here to kick stuff out of our way. So, I’m here to ask for orders. If you tell me to stay, I’ll stay, and if you tell me to go—” his hands curled into fists—“I won’t come back.”

He looked down, like he was waiting for a blow to fall.

“Mercury,” Emerald said, raising her chin and attempting her most serious crime boss voice. “I fricking forbid you to do anything but stay right here.”

His face broke into a lopsided grin. “Whatever you say, boss.”

A piece of the world fell back into place.

Emerald frowned, a thought catching up with her. “Wait a second, you _ghosted through my wall.”_

“You know, I was wondering when you’d notice that.” Mercury sat back, smirking. Lazily, he swung a hand toward the grocery bag. It passed right through, like the bag wasn’t even there. “I got my Semblance.”

Emerald sat forward, grinning. “Merc, that’s huge!” Oh, and it was a cool one, too. The sheer number of places they’d be able to break into with that!

“I can phase through people, too,” he said, poking at her arm only for his fingers to go straight through. She didn’t feel a thing.

“Okay,” she said, cringing away, “that’s freaky.”

“Yeah, Lavender’s gonna agree with you on that one,” he said.

Emerald frowned. “You’ve seen Lavender?”

Mercury nodded at the window. “She was outside on the other roof defending your honor or something.” He frowned. “Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten the ‘Dad with a Shotgun’ speech from three different people in the past twenty-four hours.” His eyes darted away with a nervous glint in them. “Which is kind of ironic given between the two of us I’m the only one who has a dad who has a shotgun…”

Emerald snorted. “Which people?”

Mercury reached into the bag. “Well, I had to go through Cypress last night to get the ingredients for this.” He set down a loaf of some kind of sweet-smelling bread wrapped in a dish towel. “And then I had to convince Tukson to sell me these.” Two books—the Vacuan legends and the dyslexia-friendly copy of _The Countess Fiancé._ “And Lavender overheard that and decided to murder me before I could hurt your feelings again, which—” he shrugged—“pretty good call, honestly.” He smiled. “It’s kinda nice. There’s a tiny army of people ready to kill for you. I like you being surrounded by a tiny army.”

Emerald frowned. She’d never thought of it that way, but it was true, wasn’t it? There were people who really, really cared about her. She could count them all on one hand, but if any more came into the picture, she’d have to use both.

“Yeah, well, you founded my tiny army,” she said. “Without you, Lav and Daily would be locked up in a Dust mine somewhere, and I’d never have met Cypress or Tukson.” A sudden anger rose in her throat, and she forced herself to keep her voice level. “So I felt like I only had that army—like people could only care about me because of you. When you left me I felt worthless, Merc.” Her mouth twisted. “I believed everything you told me. Because I trusted you. You were the first person who _ever_ gave a damn about me, and when you left—” she breathed in, shuddering—“I figured I must just not be worth giving a damn about.”

Mercury was watching her with a stricken look. “Em, I’m sorry—”

“I know,” she said. “But I need you to know what you did because—because I _need_ you not to do it again. I don’t—I don’t care how much better off you think I’d be without you. You’re wrong. I’d still be camped out behind a dumpster if it weren’t for _you_. If you hadn’t made me feel like I deserved better. So if you _ever_ start thinking I deserve better than you, you’re going to remember that that’s bullshit.” Her voice shrank. “I… I can do this alone, but it’s not much fun.” Before she could completely fall to pieces, she pulled herself together and frowned. “Also, if you ditch me again, I’m siccing Lavender on you.”

Mercury’s face was set, determined. “I won’t.”

“Good,” she said, then surprised herself by laughing. “I think you just got your fourth Shotgun Dad speech of the day.”

“Well, it’s a good round number.” Mercury shrugged, looking a little jittery. “Cake?”

Emerald nodded. “Cake.”

Mercury had forgotten to bring utensils of any kind, so they both just tore off pieces of the thing with their hands. It was sweet and still a little warm, and it felt strange that Mercury, with all his sharpness and grumbling, had made something this soft.

But then again, there was a _lot_ Emerald didn’t know about Mercury. She knew he trained so much that he didn’t go to school. She knew that his dad was a Huntsman and kind of a cheapskate, and maybe straitlaced enough that he wouldn’t put up with his kid having a pickpocket for a friend, but her knowledge of Mercury’s life outside of her own pretty much ended there. And all his talk about how he didn’t deserve her, how she needed to be kept away from “his bullshit”… something was up.

“Mercury?” she asked, her mouth still half full. “What’s your bullshit?”

“Huh?” He froze with a bite of cake halfway to his mouth.

“You said you wanted to keep me away from your bullshit,” she said. “What bullshit?”

“I—” he sort of turtled his chin into the collar of his jacket the way he would when they were little kids—“It shouldn’t be your problem.”

“But it is!” she said. “Merc, I need to know why you thought you had to leave.”

He stayed silent, hands clenching around his elbows.

“You’d been weird for weeks by the time you left, and now you come back all twitchy with your clothes cut up, which, I mean, it’s not that you’re not kind of rocking it, but it does _not_ say, ‘I am mentally sound,’ so _please.”_ She leaned forward a little. “Let me be your friend.”

He closed his eyes, then nodded. “Okay.” He shifted around so that he was sitting beside her with his back to the wall. “My bullshit.” He sighed. “About a week before—before I did the stupid thing, my dad took me on a mission.”

Emerald turned toward him with a little stir of worry. “Is that even allowed?”

Mercury shrugged. “It’s not _not_ allowed. Anyway, it was supposed to be pretty routine. Perimeter defense. I stole that little kitten thing for you on the way out. My dad was teamed up with a local Huntress. She had this rocket-launcher axe. She was cool.”

Emerald didn’t like the sound of that past-tense, but she stayed quiet, waiting for him to keep talking.

“There were more Grimm than their intel predicted, and the two of us got separated from Dad in this ravine. She—she tried to protect me. She did protect me. But…”

Emerald set a hand on his shoulder. It was trembling.

“I couldn’t help her. Dad got me out, but… it was too late for her.”

The thought of Mercury alone and terrified and blaming himself in the woods somewhere that she couldn’t help him made Emerald’s stomach twist. The next week she’d seen him, he’d looked weighed down by something unseen, and now that she knew the shape of that weight, it was horrifying.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, trying to make her voice soft.

“I dunno,” he said, sounding like he wanted to sink through the floor. “I just—I train and I train and I train, and I’m still never good enough. She _died_ for me, Em. She had a kid, and she still… and I let it happen. I wasn’t worth it. And… and what if one day, it’s you? Who’s too nice to know I’m not worth it?” He blinked hard, his eyes a little red, but he didn’t cry.

“I—I don’t know,” said Emerald. Because she wanted to say, _You_ are _worth it,_ but didn’t want to make it sound too much like she was prepared to die for him. Because she wanted to say, _That won’t happen,_ but knew the world too well to believe it. In the end she said this: “But I know I wanna stay next to you.” She scooted over so that their shoulders touched, and he leaned into her a little.

“Thanks,” he said. “I hope that doesn’t come back to bite you.”

Emerald shrugged. “If it does, I’ll have you there with me.”

Mercury nodded, a look of resolve on his face. “You will.”

“So, uh, books?” she said, nudging _The Countess Fiancé_ with her foot. All the raw, scary honesty of the last few minutes made her feel desperate for the silly, easy way they’d always gotten along when they were smaller.

“Books,” said Mercury. He didn’t seem willing to provide any further input, so Emerald decided to give him a nudge.

“Why these books?”

“Oh.” He leaned forward and picked them up off the floor. He pointed to the gold-covered Vacuan one. “I remember you wanted this one when we first went to Tukson’s.” Was that a little smirk of pride? He pointed at the other. “And this one—if your voice gets tired, I could, um take over. For just a minute. I think it’d be really slow, and I might get a headache, and I wouldn’t be as good at the voices, and now that I’m saying it aloud this plan sounds like a fucking nightmare, but—I wanted to be able to back you up.”

“That’s really sweet,” said Emerald.

“You take that back.”

Emerald hadn’t meant it as a joke, but now that Mercury was all ruffled about it, she had to run with it.

“Really, it’s so _thoughtful_ and _considerate.”_

_“Slander.”_

“Awww! I taught you ‘slander!’”

“That tears it, I’m not reading to a slanderer.”

“Will you at least buy a slanderer some tea?” Emerald wheedled. “If said slanderer ends up reading for more than two hours?”

Mercury heaved a put-upon sigh. “Do I have a choice?”

“Not if you want to find out whether Marrón or the man in black wins the duel,” she said, waggling the book in front of him.

“This is extortion,” Mercury said, but his mouth was curving into a smile.

“Make sure there’s a lot of honey in it, would you?” she said, leaning back against the wall and opening the book to the spot where they’d left off.

“Whatever you say, boss,” he said, and Emerald suddenly looked down at the book in her hands feeling like she’d broken a code inside of it.

Waverly and Daffodil, the young couple at the center of the tale, whom Emerald and Mercury both considered pretty insufferable, had started out as peasants before the plot catapulted them to Dread Piracy and royalty, respectively. And back when they were farm kids, Daffodil was constantly ordering Waverly around, and Waverly would always say, “As you wish.”

On the last day they’d spent together before Mercury had left, Emerald had read the moment when Daffodil realized that Waverly, when he said, “As you wish,” actually meant, “I love you.” Mercury had made a gagging sound and rolled his eyes, and Emerald had laughed along with him only to go back and reread the scene at night, loving it in secret.

“Merc?” she said, glancing at him. “Is ‘Whatever you say, boss’ your ‘As you wish?’”

Mercury’s eyes widened in something like panic for half a second before he quirked a smile and raised an eyebrow. “No comment. Now read me a stabbing.”

With a warm feeling beneath her ribs, Emerald did.

It was full dark, and Emerald’s empty paper cup of tea was rolling listlessly across the floor when Mercury finally stood up to leave. They’d finished _The Countess Fiancé_ and reread all the good parts (Marrón’s final duel with the six-fingered man had been subject to three rereads, and Emerald shouted, “Hello! My name is Marrón Cordoba! You killed my father! Prepare to die!” louder each time. The tea had been especially necessary after that), and they’d reduced the tea cake to crumbs.

“See you Saturday?” Emerald asked as Mercury backed up to take a running leap through the wall and into the night.

Mercury smiled. “How’s tomorrow work for you?”

Emerald figured her dumbstruck grin was answer enough, but she went ahead and said, “I think I can find some time in my busy schedule.”

“I’m honored,” said Mercury. He frowned. “Dad’s got a new work schedule, so I won’t get Saturdays anymore, but I can come see you whenever he’s on a mission, which I think might be a _lot_ of the time now.”

And maybe Emerald should have felt bad about her friend not getting to spend much time with his only parent, but she didn’t. She felt, actually, only slightly short of jumping up and down and pumping her fist in the air.

She settled for a simple, “See you tomorrow then, Mercury.”

“You too, Em,” and in the second before he leapt through her wall, his smile was full-faced and real.

Emerald fell asleep with the little jade cat watching over her, the tart smell of tea cake still lingering in the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so the curtain falls on the murder tweens! We've got another time skip between arcs now, this one three years long, so the kids'll be fifteen next week and will have already succeeded in landing themselves in all kinds of trouble. They grow up so fast!
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading! This arc was a heavy one, but I've really loved sharing it with you all, and I can't wait to introduce the teens next week! :)


	14. Welcome to the Bloodbath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emerald and Mercury are both in pretty okay places emotionally. What could go wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome aboard to the new folks who have arrived since V8 dropped, and welcome back to you guys who have been here since the start! I'm so happy you're all here! This arc is home to 80% of the plot ideas that made me write this AU, and I'm so excited to share it with all of you. On that note, because it contains so much plot and because I was a fool who originally thought that I could fit all of that plot into five chapters, you'll notice that the chapter count on this fic has stretched from 25 to 29 because this arc quickly ballooned out to eight chapters, the last of which I'll have to split into a double upload like the Arc One finale.
> 
> As with last arc, there are some general notes/warnings I'd like to make going in. While this arc is for the most part tonally lighter than Arc Two, the general level of peril is higher, as is the amount of action-related violence. Arc Two's unfortunate theme of Emerald having to deal with guys being creepy and awful and disrespectful of her personal space will carry over into this one. Also, cliffhangers abound, so there's going to be a level of suspense that might sometimes be kind of unpleasant. On a lighter note, this is the arc where Em and Merc's general dynamic starts to slowly shift from ampersand to forward slash in the tagging department because my self-control completely ran out and things just got... way shippier. So that's fun! (I hope.)
> 
> cw for this chapter: Action violence, mild gore

The proprietors of the Diamond in the Rough jewelry outlet in downtown Vale put so much faith in bulletproof windows and the burly, well-paid Huntsman who stood just outside their door that they had never placed a single security camera in their store.

And today, that was about to cost them big-time.

Emerald fidgeted with the hopefully-expensive-looking necklace that she’d lifted from a thrift store the past week.

“Weird, yeah?” whispered Daily, tugging at the stiff collar of his shirt. His ears were tucked down under a painfully dorky-looking newsboy cap because the last thing they needed was a job this big going south for a reason as stupid as the shop owners being racist.

Emerald and Lavender had stolen the clothes that she and Daily were wearing—Emerald’s green velvet pants and fancy white blouse, Daily’s polo shirt and khakis—from the mall the other day. They’d figured that a nearly three-year gap between jobs was long enough that they wouldn’t be recognized.

The clothes heist also held the dubious honor of being the first job Emerald had ever worked with an ex.

It had gone okay, she guessed, as much as that kind of thing could go okay. They’d gotten away clean.

Lavender had done the dumping, but Emerald was also pretty sure that Lavender was the one who had walked out with more hurt feelings.

_Look, I just can’t anymore, okay? No matter what you say, I’m gonna come second for you. Always._

_Lav, Merc and I aren’t—_

_I know! Doesn’t change the fact that whatever you’ve got going on with him is clearly more important to you than what you’ve got going on with me._

She’d figured that Lavender would totally win Daily in the friend-divorce, but he still came to visit and play cards every few days, just like he had before the break-up a month ago. And now that they’d all gone in on this job together, Emerald and all her friends, awkward or no, were seeing a lot of each other.

“You’re gonna have to find a good place to hang that hat once you and Lav buy the apartment,” Emerald whispered, pretending to be fascinated by the bracelets in the glass counter in front of her.

Daily’s eyes gleamed. “Me, a person with a hatrack.” He smiled. “It feels so grandiose!”

“The very lap of luxury,” Emerald said.

If she and Lavender hadn’t broken up, Emerald might be sharing that apartment with them. She stared out of the storefront window in front of them for a moment, trying to imagine it. They’d do little jobs to pay the rent—maybe even legal ones. She’d have a big shelf for her books, and they’d be able to cook every non-granola-bar food imaginable in the kitchen, and she’d make an illusion of a responsible adult whenever the apartment super came by.

She’d been ecstatic, the month before last, when Lavender had first pitched her the idea. She’d said yes right away, and Lavender had pressed a clumsy, thrilled kiss to her lips before grav-hopping out the window to go tell Daily the good news.

And then Emerald had started actually thinking about it. Where would she sleep? The place Daily and Lavender were scoping out only had two bedrooms, and it felt weird to, like, grown-up move in with a girl she’d been dating for maybe four months, even if they _had_ been friends for years.

She wouldn’t have her own space anymore—gods, if she could tell her nine-year-old self that in six years she’d be worried about not having enough time to herself, that little goblin-girl would have laughed in her face. The kicker, though, had been the fact that she might have to spend less time with Mercury. He couldn’t just come walking through the walls of an apartment she owned with _other people_ at any hour of the day, and when they were together, there’d always be someone just on the other side of the wall to distract them.

She kind of liked having her best friend to herself.

And she probably shouldn’t have shared that information with her girlfriend. Her prickly, protective, actually-very-similar-to-her-best-friend-but-we’re-choosing-not-to-think-about-that girlfriend.

So, Emerald wouldn’t be staying in the apartment. But damned if she was going to let herself be a crappy friend in addition to a crappy girlfriend, so here she was with Daily, in the opening stages of the biggest job of her career.

They spent a few minutes moseying around the store, peering into cabinets, trying their best to look unimpressed by the gobs and gobs of wealth under that glass.

“Yes,” Daily muttered. “This is a very normal activity for me.”

“Indeed, little stepbrother,” said Emerald in a stilted accent, “we are awash in riches and unmoved by the trinkets before us.”

Daily hid a laugh behind his hand and nodded toward the main counter, the one the clerk manned, where they kept the most valuable jewels. “Perhaps, stepsister, we should get on with our job.”

Emerald grinned. “After you, Reynard.”

“I should never have told you my first name.”

That had been a good Truth or Dare night.

The two of them approached the counter, and the clerk glanced up at them, a smile crossing her face. The nice clothes had done their work. That, and the fact that Emerald’s Semblance was already active, making the clerk see her eyes as green instead of red. It was a rare superstition, Emerald knew, but she didn’t want to risk it coming into play.

“Now, what would you two nice young people be looking for?” she asked.

“My father,” said Emerald, “is planning on proposing to his mother.” She nodded at Daily, who smiled and nodded.

“It’s about time,” he said.

“Oh, how sweet!” The clerk beamed, clasping her hands together.

“It is,” said Emerald.

_Because Lav and Daily and I stayed up half a night concocting the most sugary garbage backstory we could to make sure you lower your guard._

“But,” she went on, “my father’s taste in jewelry is… how do I put this diplomatically, Reynard?”

“Appalling,” said Daily.

“So. We’re here so that when he comes down to buy the ring next week, we’ll be able to guide him toward a purchase that’s worthy of Reynard’s dear mother.” This was how rich people talked, right? Lavender had spent days coaching them on proper "snob-talk," as she called it. Emerald wondered how she knew so much about how rich people acted, but she also figured she'd lost the right to ask.

“Oh, lovely,” said the clerk. “Would you like some recommendations?”

“We would appreciate that very much,” said Daily.

And this was it, this was for all the marbles. They couldn’t look too eager.

“Well, there’s this model, from…” and she yammered for a little while about the beauty and expense of this jewel and that, and Emerald waited until a moment that felt natural.

“Oh, that one’s lovely!” Emerald said appreciatively as the clerk pointed at a diamond ring that looked, to Emerald’s eye, completely identical to the past five rings that the clerk had pointed out. But this one was nestled on a bed of velvet with at least fifteen similar specimens. “May we have a closer look? The whole style is beautiful, but I can’t quite tell between the individual rings.”

“Ah,” said the clerk knowingly. “It takes a careful eye. Let me show you.”

She unlocked the case, and Emerald’s fingers twitched greedily at her side as the clerk set the velvet tray of diamonds out on the counter. She waited for the clerk to pick up one of the rings, to start explaining how to examine its facets and setting, and then activated her Semblance.

The clerk saw a well-to-do girl and boy watching her with rapt attention, their eyes and hands never straying to the embarrassment of riches on the counter.

In reality, Daily stuck out a hand and, as quickly as possible, started sliding ring after ring onto his slim fingers. As the rings made contact with his skin, they vanished, his Semblance taking effect.

“That’s perfect,” said Emerald, pointing to the ring in the clerk’s hand. “That’s just the one. Isn’t it just the one, Reynard?”

The illusion of Daily piped up joyfully, confirming that it was, in fact, The One.

“Would you mind holding it for us until I can drag my father away from work next week?” Emerald asked. “We’d be very grateful.”

“Of course, young lady,” the clerk said, setting the ring back on the velvet cushion, oblivious to the fact that it was now empty. “I’m happy to help bring such a nice family together.”

Emerald wondered if she’d still think they were “such a nice family” if she could see Daily’s ears, or her real eyes. She held her breath as the clerk picked up the nearly empty velvet tray and slid it back into the glass case. Her fingers, luckily, didn’t brush any of the places where the rings should have been, didn’t feel their absence.

“Thank you so much!” Emerald chirped as soon as the glass closed and locked. “Have a nice day!”

“You too!” called the clerk, and Emerald caught Daily’s hand, feeling the cold jangling of rings on his fingers and fighting back a smirk. They waved politely on their way out, both to the clerk and to the guard stationed beside her door outside.

Emerald furrowed her brow, struggling to maintain her Semblance as long as she could, and she and Daily were half a block away when she felt the connection snap.

“She’ll know in a minute,” Emerald said. “Phase Two.”

With a flick of his wrists, Daily freed her hard-earned, handmade knife-revolvers from the holster on his back, his Semblance fading and letting them flash into visibility.

“Thanks,” she said, holstering them on her own back. The familiar weight of them was oddly comforting. “Now let’s give those bastards more than they bargained for.”

“Those bastards” were the reason that Lavender and Daily had to get a place off the streets in the first place. In the past year, a few rich boys who went to Signal had decided it would be fun to play at being crime lords—to drum up turf wars and stick up shops and make life hell for the Faunus kids who had been making homes in the alleys of downtown Vale for years.

The Golds, as they called themselves, wouldn’t have been much more than a minor annoyance, but they were rich, which meant that they had scrolls to keep themselves organized, that their weapons were so nice that they made Emerald want to spit fire with jealousy, and that they had mommies and daddies in the hospitals and the banks and the police station to cover their asses.

They were starting to draft normal street kids into their ranks, too, the ones who were too scared to fight back and not clever enough to hide, and their “territory”—because apparently they’d decided that crime lords needed to have “territory” and drive all the other petty crooks out of it—had already swallowed up Lavender's beehive of crates and was starting to encroach on Daily's shack. Emerald’s terrace was safe, but her friends lived on the ground, and people on the ground were easy targets.

Daily ripped off the newsboy cap and threw it in a garbage can as he and Emerald raced away from the jewelry store.

“Hey!” she exclaimed. “Your hatrack!”

Daily swiveled his ears irritably. “It deserves a better hat.”

Emerald cracked a smile. “You’re probably right.”

For months, the Golds been pushing them back, a block at a time, and Emerald and her friends had retreated, giving ground, but the assholes didn’t know when to _stop._

It was Mercury who had first suggested that they try to hit back.

So here Emerald and Daily were, pulling off a job right in the heart of Gold Territory, begging for a fight. A fight they _needed_ to win.

“Think they’ll hit us around Thirteenth?” Daily asked as they rounded a corner.

“If they don’t, we’re pretty screwed,” Emerald said. The Golds had a sentry posted on the corner of Ninth and Thirty-Third most days all wired up with a scroll, and Emerald and Daily were banking on the hope that said sentry would be competent enough to spot them and raise the alarm, that it would take his allies a few blocks to mobilize after that. Coming up on their left was the third-story balcony where the Golds usually stationed their sentry.

“Gimme some rings,” said Emerald, not slowing down.

Daily loosened a few from his fingers, his ears flicking back. “You’re sure you want to do this?”

“It’s a little late to change my mind.” Emerald said, reaching for them, but he pulled them out of range.

“This plan puts you in the most danger.” Daily came to a halt just a few steps out of sight of the balcony. “I… need you to promise you’re not just doing this for us because you feel bad about Lavender.”

Emerald froze. It was the first time Daily had brought up the breakup at all, and it threw her.

Okay, guilt, maybe, had been a factor in this plan, but it wasn’t the only thing at work.

Emerald squared her shoulders. “I want you two to be safe because you’re my _friends,_ ” she said. “And I want these idiot rich boys off my streets. Good enough?”

“Good enough,” said Daily, and he set the rings in her hand, the midday sun catching on them and making them glow. His mouth turned up in a nervous smile. “Shall we, stepsister?”

“We shall,” said Emerald, and they broke back into a sprint. She kept the rings spaced between the knuckles of her left hand, where they could glitter in the sunlight and catch the sentry’s eye.

They tore past the balcony, and a yell went up.

“That’s right, assholes,” Emerald muttered, still going at a dead sprint. She needed to hit her target alley before they cut her off, or things could get ugly. “Come and get us.”

As they passed Tenth Street, the goons started to emerge, three peeling out of this alley, two pelting out of that shop, all with scraps of gold cloth wound around their arms. Within a minute, half a dozen were behind Emerald and Daily, chasing after them, while another six were rushing toward them, cutting off their path forward right at the junction of Twelfth and Thirteenth. A dead-end alley opened up to Emerald’s right just twenty feet ahead.

The vice was closing.

It was time.

Daily nodded at Emerald, and on cue, she yelled, “Run! I’ll hold them off!”

“The rings!” Daily shouted, reaching for her hand, just like they’d rehearsed, and she pulled it back.

“Collateral. Now _go.”_ Emerald made sure that her eyes were wide, that her hands trembled a little.

Daily kept _Kid Gloves,_ the long-bladed, retractable gauntlets that he’d worked on alongside Emerald while she’d been tinkering with her own retraction mechanism, invisible during combat, so the only sign that he’d fired the left one was a slight bend in his arm followed by a whistling noise, then a _chunk_ as the end of the blade embedded itself in the bricks

“Flyers!” shouted a boy with a gaudy silver belt and a beautifully maintained bow and quiver of arrows that marked him as one of the higher-ranking Golds. “With me! Russel, take your guys and teach this one a lesson.”

Emerald, sharply aware of the fact that she was “this one,” broke into a sprint and pelted down the alley as a boy with a green mohawk nodded and drew a pair of knives.

Emerald glanced over her shoulder to see four boys grappling and leaping up onto the roof after Daily. As their leader cleared the roofline, still in midair, Daily whirled and punched him in the face. The kid had clearly been expecting to encounter a regular fist, not one wearing ten invisible diamonds as brass knuckles, and he toppled off of the roof with a flare of blue aura and a satisfying _crack._

The ones who kept on chasing after Daily would make it approximately five rooftops before they found themselves face-to-face with Lavender.

Emerald figured the fight would be over pretty quickly after that.

She kept running until she smacked into the dead end of the alley, then turned, facing Russel and his eight remaining goons with wide, frightened eyes.

“This is Gold Gang territory, Green,” said Russel. “Or are you too stupid to know that?”

Emerald fought back the urge to snicker at their dorky-ass name and set her jaw in a show of frightened defiance.

“I’m not scared of you.” Her voice shook just the right amount.

“Yeah, that’s been a problem for us,” Russel said, taking a step forward. “All you little garbage-divers refusing to respect our turf.” He drew a blade that looked like a fancier cousin of the one she’d affixed to the end of her own rusty, beloved _Thief’s Respite._

The last of the goons were past the mouth of the alley, all of them clumped together in the narrow, brick-lined trough. Emerald scanned them with her eyes—ratty clothes, mostly. Improvised weapons. Just street-kid recruits. Russel was the only Signal student in the mix.

“Do you think if we make a mess of your pretty face, it might get the message across?” asked Russel.

Emerald said nothing, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards.

“Why are you smiling, Green?”

“Because you’re even stupider than you look,” said the cause of Emerald’s smile, who had just phased out of the brick wall by the mouth of the alley. Mercury smirked. “And that’s saying a lot.”

Russel laughed, not yet understanding just how screwed he was. Emerald and Mercury slid into fighting stances with all Russel’s forces bottlenecked between them.

Emerald drew _Thief’s Respite_ and grinned. “You think, if we make a mess of your ugly face, we might get our message across?”

“And what message is that?” Russel asked, sliding back half a step.

The black metal of Mercury’s greaves gleamed dangerously under the sunlight. “Guess.”

* * *

Gods, Mercury loved fighting.

The speed and the impact, the shifting momentum, the letting it all _go._

He loved fighting as much as he hated training.

When his eyes met Emerald’s in the split second before all hell broke loose, they were both smiling.

And then he was moving, snapping a leg up to catch one kid in the jaw, twisting to block a spear with his greave, then spinning, switching legs as he rammed a kick into the tallest kid’s shoulder and then launched himself into a flip, bringing a greave down hard on the kid’s head and sending him stumbling out of the fight.

Never still. Never caught. Quicksilver.

A gun’s hammer clicked behind him, and he didn’t flinch, didn’t even have to use his Semblance to phase through it.

Because Emerald was there, and Emerald had his back, and by the time he’d turned around to face whichever goon had been dumb enough to try and shoot him, one of the retractable blades on the end of her weapon had sliced the gun clean out of the kid’s hand. With her free hand, she was parrying a strike from Russel, forcing his knife skyward so that the jet of fire that shot out of the end of it flew past her, missing green hair by an inch.

Mercury told himself not to worry as she spun out of the way of a swing from Russel’s second knife, the blade she’d thrown to help Mercury slicing just under Russel’s mohawk and rebounding off aura before it retracted back into her revolver.

Emerald was better than that punk would ever be. He could trust her to do her part of the job.

_And I’ll do mine._

Mercury jumped and spun a kick into the face of the kid that had tried to shoot him, making him slam into the wall of the alley and crash down like a ton of bricks.

Two down, six to go. A good two-thirds of those six had been just smart enough to read the writing on the wall and were behind Mercury now, fleeing back toward the mouth of the alley, while the remaining two tried to box him in by the wall so their pals could get away.

He glanced at the spear and sword pointed at him and smirked. Then he activated his Semblance, rolled right through them, and sped intangibly through the retreating line of kids. He whirled, going solid again, to find all six of them lined up in front of him.

It was all he could do not to laugh. Were they _trying_ to make this easy for him?

He ducked the swing of an axe, coiling and then lashing out, kicking the kid furthest to the left and moving on like clockwork, kicking each of the guys square in the middle of the chest in turn so quickly that they had no time to dodge.

Three fell back, groaning, but the other three held strong. Those must be the ones with aura, then.

At the end of the alley, Emerald had Russel on the ropes. All his slashes missed her just by an inch or two, her Semblance telling him that she wasn’t quite where she actually was. For a second, she met Mercury’s eyes and nodded upward, and that was all the instruction Mercury needed.

The biggest guy with aura raised a club with both hands, slamming it down toward Mercury’s head, and instead of dodging backward, Mercury slid forward and sideways half a step, so the club whistled past his shoulder. With both hands, he caught the guy’s wrists and rolled backward, yanking his opponent off his feet as his back met the ground. Mercury bent his knee, the gears in his greaves clicking and loading, and when the guy was right above him, he straightened his leg sharply, firing straight into the guy’s stomach and launching him into the air.

Where one of Russel’s fire Dust knives, guided astray by Emerald’s Semblance, was waiting to punch him out of the sky. The knife seemed to explode as it made contact with his aura, and then he hit the ground hard, orange light shattering over him.

Mercury swiveled his legs and kipped upright before either of his other opponents could swing down at him. Russel was staring at his wounded teammate, too gobsmacked to notice Emerald rising up behind him with _Thief’s Respite_ in its kama configuration. Pale green aura shattered as the blade met his head.

Em’s little smirk of pride as that mohawked idiot’s chin met the ground was one-hundred-percent the best part of Mercury’s day.

He fired a shot from his left greave, forcing one of the two remaining fighters to dodge to the side, bumping into his pal. Before they could scramble apart, the chain of _Thief’s Respite_ had wrapped around them both, lashing them together. With a spinning kick and another shot from his greaves, Mercury launched them into the wall of the alley. They met the bricks with a _crunch,_ and Emerald’s revolver fired twice. The boys’ auras shattered in a mishmash of brown and blue.

The chain retracted, and the last two boys slumped to the ground. There was a moment of silence, after the clamor of gunshots and metal on metal, that was broken only by the pained groans of their enemies.

Emerald and Mercury were the only people left standing in the alley. Just like they’d planned.

She bobbed her head, raising her eyebrows as if to say, _You okay?_ , and Mercury nodded, smiling.

Emerald’s face hardened, then, and she took a step toward Russel. He was still conscious, a bruise already forming on his chin, and she bent down, catching him by the collar of his shirt and forcing him to meet her eyes. Mercury had never thought the red in them was creepy, but the way they flashed when she dragged Russel upright made Mercury glad she was on his side.

Mercury circled around to plant himself beside her, like a good threatening enforcer, and surveyed the alley with narrowed eyes, making sure none of the guys they’d knocked down were looking to retaliate. A couple of them were stumbling to their feet and running away, and Mercury let them. They’d learned the lesson Emerald and Lavender had wanted them to learn.

“Now you’re going to listen to me,” Emerald said, her voice low, and Russel nodded. “You’re going to go back to whatever brat is in charge of you, and you’re going to tell him exactly what happened here. You’re going to tell him to stop going after the Faunus kids. You’re going to tell him that you’re only alive because we weren’t quite angry enough to want to change that. You’re going to tell him, Russel, that we’re not to be fucked with. And that unless he wants a war on his hands, he’ll leave us alone.”

“He’s not gonna be happy about that.” Russel’s eyes narrowed like he was about to spit. Emerald let go of him, shoving him to the ground.

“Sucks for him,” she growled. She glanced over at Mercury. “We need to move.”

Sirens were already blaring in the distance, drawn, probably, by the sound of gunfire.

“See ya ‘round, kid.” Mercury smirked. Then Emerald looped one arm around his waist and fired a blade of _Thief’s Respite_ into the roofline. The chain retracted and drew them into the air, and he held on tight to her as they flew out of the alley and away.

In seconds, they were running, leaping rooftops, like they had for years and years now, ever since the orange-sunned, gold-clouded day that he’d chased her across the skyline almost seven years ago.

Luckiest day of his damn life.

The past three years had been—okay, probably by most people’s standards, they would have been really crappy years, but by Mercury’s standards, they were amazing.

He’d managed to hide his Semblance from Marcus, and Marcus couldn’t take what he didn’t know existed. Sometimes, during training, the urge to phase through an aura-shattering punch or retreat through a wall was almost unbearable, but Mercury held strong. His Semblance was his only ticket to the world outside of Marcus.

It was what let him hide comic books in the walls of his bedroom, what let him go buy his own food to cook while Marcus was on classified, high-stakes missions from the Something, which, thank gods, was almost half the time now. It was what let him see Emerald.

And now, he was starting to think it might get him a more permanent escape. In eighteen months’ time, he and Emerald would be old enough to start at Beacon—hell, the entrance exams were just a year away. He could time it with one of Marcus’s missions, sneak out, get accepted (there was no doubt in his mind that he and Emerald both would pass whatever test that old kook had set with flying colors), and then sneak out again on move-in day. Beacon was one of the most well-guarded facilities in the world, full of Huntsmen who might actually have the power to fight back an assassin.

If there was anywhere on Remnant where Mercury would be safe from Marcus, it would be there.

For the first time in Mercury’s life, there was an end in sight, an escape from the beatings and the smell of booze and the constant, stupid cruelty. When he was free, he’d finally come clean, tell Emerald everything. He’d be able to give her the truth the way she’d always given it to him.

He just had to hang on for one more year, and there was no way in hell he was going to ruin that by letting Marcus take his Semblance.

Emerald started laughing as she ran, her hair flying out behind her. “Gods! I don’t think I’ve ever been that scary before!”

Mercury smiled. “I was shaking in my steel-clad boots, for sure.”

She snorted. “Don’t be condescending.”

“I would never!” Mercury scoffed, knowing full well that he would be, and had been, many, many times, even if now wasn’t one of them. “I respect murder-mode Em! I mean, is she as scary as nerd-mode Em getting _way_ too into those vampire romance books? No, but—hey!”

Emerald elbowed him mid-jump, and he nearly missed the next roof.

“You promised me you’d stop bugging me about that!” she yelled.

“I crossed my fingers,” said Mercury. “That contract is in no way binding.” He smirked. “Really, it was naïve of you to think that I would ever let you live that down.”

Another elbow, but this time he was prepared for it, and he just laughed. They were near the rendezvous point now, and as Emerald grappled off the roof, he leapt down past her, rolling and landing in a crouch.

“You think you look really cool when you do that, huh?” said Emerald, landing neatly beside him and retracting her blade.

“Well, I’m right,” he said, getting to his feet and stretching.

She laughed. “C’mon. Let’s get to Tukson’s.”

“Sure,” said Mercury. “Dude is weirdly okay with being a front for our criminal conspiracy.”

Emerald shrugged. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“See, what does that even mean, anyway?” Mercury said. “I don’t wanna get near a horse’s mouth, gift or no. Those teeth’ll take your nose off.”

“Well, all the more reason not to do it, then,” she said as they reached Tukson’s door. He phased through ahead of her and pushed it open from the inside.

Lavender and Daily were already there. Tukson stood at the counter with his back to the door.

“I see nothing that’s happening here, okay?” he called without turning around.

“Okay,” said Emerald, hurrying over to Daily and fishing the few rings she’d taken to bait the Golds out of her pocket.

“What, did you guys stop for lunch on the way back?” asked Lavender, glancing up from the latest issue of _X-Ray and Vav,_ which Mercury was planning to wrestle out of her hands sometime in the next three minutes while trying very hard not to look invested in the fact that half the heroes had been trapped in an underground chamber full of Grimm at the end of the last issue.

“Knives, I seem to remember you and Daily fighting literally half as many guys as Em and I had to deal with.”

“And I seem to remember you betting me twenty lien that you’d beat us back to Tukson’s anyway,” Lavender said, unwavering.

Shit. He’d really hoped she’d forget about that. Trust Knives to hold a grudge. He fished the money out of his pocket and slapped it into her waiting palm.

Daily accepted the rings Emerald handed him and sighed. “Girls, girls, you’re both pretty, okay?”

Mercury grinned. “You know, you’re not wrong, Daily.” Lavender smacked him in the back of the head with the spine of the comic book. Across the room, Emerald hid her face with a hand, and Daily patted her arm.

Ah, right. The breakup. He still didn’t understand what was up with that. Lav and Em had seemed like they really liked each other, and since they’d split, Lavender was even crankier around him than usual. Well, he’d decided she might be a good friend when she’d threatened him at knifepoint when they were twelve, so there was a sort of hostility built into their dynamic from the get-go, but she was starting to treat him like she had right after he’d come back and apologized to Emerald.

Only this time, he hadn’t done anything to hurt Em. And he’d been pretty staunchly pro-Lavender for the entire time they’d been dating. Okay, sure, the one time he’d walked in on them kissing, he’d wanted to sink into the ground and die, but he hadn’t made that public knowledge. He’d hated that ugly coil of jealousy in his chest with every fiber of his being. Feeling like other people belonged to you was the kind of thing Marcus did, and Mercury had done his best to kill it.

Besides, it was reassuring to know that a tough-as-nails girl with giant knives was watching his best friend’s back when he couldn’t.

So there was no reason for Lavender to be so goddamned weird around him now.

He made a grab for the comic book only for Lavender to pivot out of his way.

“Uh-uh,” she said. “I got here first, remember?”

Emerald cleared her throat. Mercury ignored it and darted his other hand forward, closing it around the comic book. He tugged. Lavender tugged back.

“Are you two abusing my books again?” Tukson asked, still not turning around.

“Um… no?” said Mercury.

Lavender gave a long-suffering eyeroll and nodded at him, signaling that it was okay for him to walk around the book and look at the pages with her. She flipped back to the beginning.

“Lotta captions,” he said, prodding.

Lavender blundered right into the trap. “Ugh, you read so _slow.”_

Mercury threw his head back and, in the most whiny and irritating voice he could muster, called out, “ _Tuksonnnn!_ Lavender’s shaming me for my disability!”

“You two are going to put me in an early grave, you know that, right?” Tukson said.

Figuring he’d mostly reached his obnoxiousness quota for the day, Mercury turned his eyes to the comic book.

“Oh, Tukson!” said Emerald. “I actually have a thing that’s legal to ask you about!”

“Shoot,” he said.

“Do you have any copies of _The Third Crusade?”_ Emerald asked. “Daily and I were talking the other day, and he said it was one of the best things to read if I wanted to be better informed about the Faunus rights movement.”

“Nerd,” Mercury and Lavender whispered at the same time before immediately fixing their eyes back on the comic book and pretending they hadn’t.

Tukson let out a low whistle. “You only carry that book if you want the cops to bust you for White Fang tendencies. Where’d you even find a copy of it, Daily?”

A little interested in the answer to that question, Mercury glanced up from the comic book. Daily was a weird little dude, and Mercury’s liking for him was a lot more uncomplicated than his friendship (?) with Lavender was. He was funny when you didn’t expect him to be, and he was sort of gentle with Emerald, in a way that Mercury—and probably Lavender, too—had no fucking clue how to replicate.

Plus, he was as gay as he was ace, so the chances of Mercury walking in on him making out with his best friend were slim to none. That made things simpler.

Daily’s ears flicked back against his red hair, and his shoulders hiked up a notch. “My, um. My parents had a copy. Before.”

Emerald set a hand in the middle of his back, her head bowed.

Tukson turned around, his eyebrows drawing up in the middle. Beside Mercury, Lavender went rigid.

Daily shuffled, like he’d realized that every set of eyes in the store was fixed on him all of a sudden. Mercury slipped away from Lavender’s side, making room for Daily there, and Daily zipped straight over to her like she was a homing beacon.

“So, Tukson,” said Emerald, shifting the attention away from Daily while he gathered himself back up, a little bit of mock hurt creeping into her voice. “You’re telling me that this shop isn’t actually home to every book under the sun?”

“That’s just false advertising,” Mercury piped up, shaking his head ruefully.

Tukson sighed. “I swear to gods, I love you kids, but sometimes you can make running an honest business very difficult.” He glanced at Mercury. “You especially.”

“Aw, shucks,” drawled Mercury, but his head was spinning because the notion that a grown-up could say, so casually, that he loved the bickering street kids who constantly ran amok in his place of work was just dizzying. Were all people like this? Were they just able to hand out niceness without feeling a twinge of fear that they’d be bitten in return? Or was it something about the people Emerald pulled into her orbit? Was she just carrying all the good with her?

“Speaking of business,” said Daily, his voice steady again. “Lavender and I should probably get in contact with the person who’s fencing these—” he glanced at Tukson—“ _very legal collectors’ items_ for us.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Tukson said dryly, and the four of them made their way out of the shop and onto the street. They split into pairs then, Daily and Lavender going one way, Emerald and Mercury the other.

* * *

Mercury came back the next day. Emerald figured his dad must be off on a pretty long mission—he’d been here every day for the past week, not that Emerald was complaining.

Okay, maybe she had complained a couple times as a joke, but Mercury knew by now when not to take her seriously. At this point she was just surprised that he even bothered going home at night while his dad was away. It wouldn’t be too hard to repurpose all the pillows in her reading nook and build a sort of makeshift pallet so that she wouldn’t have to say good-bye to him as much.

She’d maybe given that too much thought.

“So,” Mercury said, the second he’d phased through her wall. Emerald was so used to it at this point that she barely glanced up from her book. “In all the heist planning, I forgot something important.” There was a little smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, and Emerald set her book aside with a smile.

“Yeah?”

His hands were clasped behind his back, and he held them out to reveal a creepy porcelain doll head in one hand and a surprisingly beautiful glass spider in the other.

Emerald grinned and clapped her hands together. “The Legion of Atrocities! I almost forgot!”

Since they were twelve, every time he’d gone on a mission with his dad, Mercury had come back to Emerald with some tiny souvenir he’d swiped while he was away. Her pretty jade cat had been the first and was still the most precious, but it certainly wasn’t the last.

At first, Mercury had gone red in the face every time he’d handed one of the little gifts to her. He’d looked away and stammered while she thanked him. At first, the gifts had been pretty and sweet, and really, there was only so long she could expect Merc to maintain “pretty and sweet.”

Over time, as the horrible rift that had formed between them when they were twelve had mended and faded, the gifts got weirder. And uglier. Horrible kitsch knick-knacks—ill-matched salt-and-pepper shakers and dismembered toys and gaudy, awful Nondescript Winter Holiday ornaments—flooded Emerald’s terrace, lining her windowsill and standing guard around her bookshelf.

After a couple of years, they’d pretty much exhausted the world’s natural supply of tacky and hideous objects.

So, they’d found a way to make their own.

Mercury flopped down onto the floor next to her and held the bizarre pair of items out in front of them both, craning his neck so that his head nearly rested on her shoulder—so that they’d see as close to the same picture as possible.

“Seems pretty open-and-shut,” he said. “Just stick the doll-head on the spider-head, and boom! New recruit.”

Emerald tilted her head to the side, contemplating. “Hmmm. That feels too easy.”

“You can do better?” he prodded.

“Yeah, I can,” Emerald said smugly. “Flip it. If you put the doll-head on the spider-butt, you see the spider staring at you, and you’re like, ‘Ugh, a spider,’ but then you turn it around, and it’s _so_ much worse.”

“You truly are an evil mastermind,” Mercury said, and Emerald liked, too much, the sound of his voice close by her ear.

She grinned. “Fuse it.”

“Whatever you say, boss.”

Ever since she’d figured out what they meant, Emerald had never been able to help grinning when she heard those four words.

Mercury set the doll head just over the glass spider’s rear end and then lowered it, his mouth shifting to the side in concentration the way it did when he was trying to be precise with his Semblance. The doll head slid smoothly into its new place, the molecules slipping past each other, and when Mercury let go, it was fused into place, his Semblance leaving it stranded.

“You know, I think this might be one of my finest works,” Mercury said smugly as he handed it to her.

“I’d better find a good place for it, then.” Emerald smiled as she took it.

While she bustled around her windowsill, trying to find a fitting place for the latest abomination—after three years, windowsill real estate was starting to grow thin—Mercury pulled the emblem he’d spent the past week working on out of his bag and got to stitching.

He was as surprisingly decent at sewing as Emerald was laughably terrible at it, and onto the grey background of cloth, he’d sewn a narrow black boot. Now, he was pressing down another piece of black cloth, overlapping it with the boot, and Emerald could make out the jagged feathers of a wing.

 _Wait._ His emblem had looked exactly like that the last time he’d gone home, nearly three weeks ago. Given how quickly Mercury worked, that was weird.

“Did you get any work done on that while you were home?” she asked.

Mercury snorted. “And waste Dad’s training hours on something this showy and dumb?”

Emerald gritted her teeth. She had a lot of opinions about Mercury’s dad that she didn’t feel comfortable sharing. No guy who let his twelve-year-old go on a dangerous mission could be completely on the up-and-up, no matter how great Merc seemed to think he was.

But she didn’t want to bicker today, at least, not about anything serious.

“So,” she said, jumping onto a silly argument that they’d been able to keep running for the last two months, “if you’re putting the wings on your emblem, there’s no reason not to commit to a theme. And there’s no reason not to name your greaves already.”

“There’s no reason _to_ name them either,” said Mercury, not looking up his work.

“Everyone names their weapons, Merc,” said Emerald.

Mercury frowned. “My dad doesn’t.”

Hoping for a tone that sounded more teasing than actually angry, she shot back. “Your dad is clearly some kind of backwoods survivalist freak, Merc. He doesn’t get a vote.”

Mercury froze for a second, jaw working, and then said, “What was the name you were thinking of again?”

Emerald thunked down a book of legends from ancient Sanus that she’d bought from Tukson’s last year and flipped to the page for a wing-footed local deity—a protector of thieves, which Emerald thought was fitting. _“Talaria,”_ she said. “His boots are called _Talaria.”_

“See, _Talaria_ doesn’t sound like something you’re gonna break someone’s nose with. It sounds like a rich lady who’s ticked off that somebody served the wrong finger sandwiches at her garden party.”

Emerald snickered. “Under those circumstances, a rich lady might break someone’s nose. And unless you want Lavender to succeed in making ‘Shooty Booties’ stick, you’re going to have to take action.”

Mercury smirked. “Point taken. But you can’t deny that the guy’s hat is deeply stupid. I dunno if I wanna be associated with that.”

“It’s not any stupider than your hair,” Emerald shot back, and she knew she was right about that. Mercury’s bangs were getting more ridiculous by the month, and it had never, ever stopped sticking up in the back the way it had when they were kids.

The fact that she happened to like his stupid hair was nobody’s business but her own.

“My hair is not stupid!” Mercury clapped his hands to his head, like he was trying to shield his hair from the insult, and Emerald couldn’t help but laugh at his capacity to go from “completely unflappable” to “gravely offended” in 0.8 seconds. “You keep up talk like that, and I’ll make you a shitty cake for our half-birthday.”

Mercury had figured out, a little before they’d turned thirteen, that Emerald had no idea when her birthday was, and still in the twitchy, panicked throes of the guilt he clearly felt about leaving her, he’d offered to share his own, plus half-birthdays to make up for all the ones she’d missed. So every six months, he’d bake her a cake, and she’d buy him a comic book, and they’d sit side by side on a rooftop and talk and laugh and get a little older. She already had her eye on a volume of _X-Ray and Vav_ that Tukson had set aside for her for next week, when their thirty-first half-birthday would roll around.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Emerald grinned.

There was a familiar _thud!_ against the bricks just outside the terrace, and Emerald cut her laugh off short at the tell-tale sound of Lavender grav-hopping onto her wall. It was a sound she hadn’t heard in the past month, and it put a little twist in her stomach.

Unlike Emerald, Mercury was actually facing the window, and his eyes went wide.

 _“Fuck.”_ His sewing dropped from his fingers, and Emerald spun around to see Lavender clambering sideways through the window, carrying Daily in her arms.

The entire right side of Daily’s head was matted down with blood.

“Oh gods!” Emerald bolted to her feet and caught Lavender’s arm as her Semblance gave out and she and Daily toppled to the floor. “What the hell happened?”

She pulled Daily out of Lavender’s arms, laying him down on her bedroll and understanding, as she did, the source of the blood.

Daily’s right ear, the fox ear, was gone, jaggedly shorn off by a blade at its base.

Emerald reminded herself that throwing up would only make this situation worse. She swallowed down her horror. “How?” Her voice was lower than she’d expected, dangerous. It barely sounded like a question.

“Rich bastards,” said Lavender, slumping to the floor. “I don’t know how they found us, but they found us.” Mercury stood beside her, his hands balling into fists.

“Lav, pass me the medkit,” said Emerald. She’d lifted a combat first-aid kit from LargeMart last year after Mercury had gotten himself banged up while practicing landing strategies, but she hadn’t had a reason to use it since. As Lavender slid the neat plastic box into her hands, Emerald found herself staring down at it helplessly.

That was a lot of blood.

Her fingers stumbled on the latches, and once she’d pried the lid open, her hands hovered uselessly over it, shaking. Couldn’t she just make him not be hurt? Was there a way to do that?

Daily’s eyes fluttered open for a moment, the usual spark of them flattened, and he said, in a threadbare voice, “Don’t be scared, Emerald.”

“No,” she said.

It wasn’t fear that was making her shake all over. It was rage.

“I got it.” Mercury was beside her, suddenly, taking the medkit out of her trembling hands. He was putting aside the tweezers, finding bandages, little alcohol swabs, sorting them with a practiced ease while squinting at Daily’s wound.

Emerald sat back on her heels and turned to Lavender, tearing her eyes away from the bloody mess that some rich piece of shit had made of her friend’s head.

There were tears in Lavender’s eyes, her jaw set and quivering. A month ago, Emerald would have been able to wrap her arms around her, to bury her face in that blond cloud of hair and whisper that everything would be all right.

But she couldn’t do that now, so she sat down across from Lavender, their knees almost touching, and asked, “How did they do this?”

“They shouldn’t have,” Lavender said miserably, wiping her eyes. “I shouldn’t have let them.”

“Lavender, you know this isn’t your—”

“I couldn’t stop them!” Lavender snapped. “They hit us in an alley a block away from the fence. It was Russel, and that kid with the ugly belt that Day punched off the roof, and this—this guy—he must have been the archer’s twin, they had the same face—and he could make your feet stick to the ground so you couldn’t move.” Lavender’s voice shriveled as she said that last bit.

“I slammed that son of a bitch into the walls _so many times_ with my Semblance, but he wouldn’t break, not for a long time, and Daily—there was another guy there. Bigger. Blond. Fucking full of it. I think he’s their leader. He had a sword, a big gold sword, and I couldn’t move and the other two held Daily still and—” Lavender thunked her head back against the wall, her eyes squeezing shut. Something stirred in Emerald’s memory, but the sight of a tear rolling down Lavender’s cheek broke her train of thought. Second to Mercury, Lavender was the most powerful person in Emerald’s world. Seeing her break down like this set dread in Emerald’s stomach.

“And they added hate crimes to our list of reasons to want them dead,” Mercury finished. Emerald glanced at him. He’d bandaged Daily’s head, the white wrappings livid against pale red hair, and his hands were clenched again.

“Good for them,” Daily mumbled. Sweat stood out on the half of his forehead that wasn’t swathed over with bandages.

“Once I broke through the aura on the guy who had our feet trapped, I just threw them all one way and me and Day the other.” Lavender was staring into the distance as she spoke, like she was seeing it happen again. “Used up all my power getting us here, and the rings—they took them, Green. No apartment. We’re stuck.”

Emerald wished she had a blanket to wrap around Lavender’s shoulders. Lavender and Daily, they’d always had blankets to spare when she was twelve and terrified.

And those bastards had hurt them. Emerald hadn’t ever wanted to kill anyone before, not really, but this was the closest thing she had to a family. A hand’s worth of people in the whole world loved her, and she wasn’t about to let those sons of bitches start lopping off fingers. Her jaw tightened, and Mercury must have seen it because he turned away from Daily, prodding her shoulder with a knuckle.

“Em,” he whispered. “When I go back to my dad’s tonight, don’t you dare do anything stupid.”

“I won’t,” she said, nodding. “I won’t.”

Mercury sat back, apparently satisfied with her answer.

Behind her back, Emerald had crossed her fingers. That contract was in no way binding. Because the second Daily’s small, blood-smeared form had slumped into her arms, Emerald had decided to do something very stupid indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I'm excited to hear what you guys think of the murder teens :D (and I'm also just really enjoying getting to break out all these "I'm the One" lyrics as chapter titles for this arc).
> 
> Tune in next week for when Emerald forcibly shoves the friend group's brain cell into Mercury's hands so that she can go absolutely hog wild!


	15. Conquer Your Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emerald seeks out revenge and gets more than she bargains for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Tryptophan Coma Day to those who celebrate it, and happy normal Thursday to everyone else (there was a minute there where I thought I wouldn't be able to escape IRL pie responsibilities long enough to post this)!
> 
> cw: sexual harassment in Emerald's second POV section.

Emerald decided that it would be best not to do anything stupid until Daily had recovered. Mercury was out of the picture for the next few days—Emerald hoped he’d be able to get free in time for their half-birthday—and she didn’t want to leave her friends without backup while they were this fragile.

Lavender and Daily stayed in Emerald’s terrace with her for five days. Keeping Daily off the ground and out of the line of fire seemed like a good idea. She and Lavender slept in shifts, either crashing on the pillows of the reading nook or sitting awake in the smeared moonlight, watching over Daily as he tossed and turned, jumping at every bark of a leashed dog, every slam of a car door in the distance.

Their world had never been safe before, but now it was hostile. It had learned how to bite.

The morning before Emerald and Mercury’s half-birthday, she helped Daily and Lavender move back into Daily’s place behind the garden center.

She wouldn’t have minded if they’d stayed longer, even if it was awkward to hold conversations with Lavender lately, especially with how quiet Daily had gone since the Golds had taken his ear.

But Lavender had muttered, “Look, I don’t wanna crowd you, okay?” She had kept her eyes fixed on the floor while she said it, arms crossed tight over her chest.

And Emerald figured it wasn’t fair to force Lavender to be around her when it clearly hurt her so much, so she loaded her friends up with half her food stores and a couple of the Atrocities that Daily liked to fidget with and covered their backs while they hurried down the streets in the early morning fog, eyes peeled for danger.

Once Lavender had gotten Daily settled under a blanket—he hadn’t stopped shivering in the longest time—Emerald thought about staying, about asking if they’d deal her in for a hand of cards like old times. But the vacant look in Daily’s eyes and the hardness in Lavender’s told her that the old times were long gone.

Emerald turned away from Daily’s shack _Thief’s Respite_ drawn and payback on her mind.

* * *

“Heya, Cypress,” Mercury said, setting his bags down in front of her. Marcus had been called off on a two-day mission this morning, which left Mercury with just enough time to get ready for tomorrow. He’d mostly put the finishing touches on Emerald’s gift, and cake itself was cooperating well enough, but the frosting was proving to be… problematic.

Cypress beamed at him the same way she’d always beamed at Emerald, green eyes crinkling. “Good to see you, Mercury! What have you got today?”

Mercury felt a quick twinge of embarrassment. “It’s Em and I’s half-birthday tomorrow, so cake stuff mostly.”

“Oh, what year is it this time?” she asked. “Thirteen?”

Mercury blinked, offended. “Fifteen! And a half!” For gods’ sakes, he was a head taller than Cypress was at this point, couldn’t he get a little respect around here?

Cypress _tsk_ ed. “See, I just don’t accept that, Mercury. You two were little babies the first time you came through here—you’re not allowed to make me feel that old!”

“What, you’re not excited to be a fortunetelling crone who scams her clients?”

Cypress tilted her head to the side in thought. “Well, if you’re gonna put it that way…” She heaved a sigh. “I _suppose_ you’re allowed to be fifteen. Not a half, though.”

“That’s real generous of you, Cypress,” Mercury deadpanned.

Cypress cast a look of suspicion at the contents of his bags. “You’re not going to let the frosting blow up this time? Because I seem to recall you mentioning a practice batch that—”

“Was an important step for scientific inquiry,” said Mercury. “And no, I’m not going to let it blow up this time.”

He’d managed to scrape all the blackened fudge from the walls before Marcus got home, but it still wasn’t a mistake he planned to repeat.

“Well, I think it’s real sweet, you going to all this trouble to make it yourself.” There was a villainous little gleam in her eyes.

 _“Cypress,_ I have an _image_ to maintain,” Mercury groaned.

“You know, they _do_ say that the way to a girl’s heart is through her stomach.”

“Hey, it’s a traditional cake! A routine cake! Get your gossip away from my routine cake.”

Cypress chuckled. “All right, all right, I’ll stop givin’ you a hard time.” She smirked. “Just invite me to the wedding.”

_“Cypress!”_

Mercury rolled his eyes as he marched back through the automatic doors of the LargeMart. For as much as Cypress acted like her years made her wiser than the Brothers themselves, she sure could say the stupidest things. The exact instant they’d turned fourteen, the marriage jokes had started pouring in like a flood, and even after a year and a half, Mercury hadn’t been able to find a way to dam them. Cypress really only made them when Mercury was there alone—she probably liked Em too much to embarrass her like that—so he didn’t have any backup to help shut them down.

It was ridiculous. For one thing, Mercury didn’t even know if Emerald liked guys. The only crushes she’d had that he’d seen were Lavender and that ring-slinging girl they’d watched in the Vytal Tournament when they were ten. And, like, guys mostly sucked, so he couldn’t really blame her if she didn’t.

And Mercury… Emerald was his best friend. No fucking way was he going to do anything to screw that up. Not even if he liked leaning his head on her shoulder while he fused knick-knacks together for her. Not even if, when they reread _The Countess Fiancé,_ the “As You Wish” scene had secretly become his favorite.

Bags in hand, Mercury made his way to Daily’s shack, wondering if he and Lav had moved back in by now or if they were still holed up at Emerald’s place. He hated how, when Marcus was home, the rest of the world closed off completely, so that when he came back everything had shifted without him knowing.

He didn’t like not knowing what was happening to his friends, especially now.

When he got to Daily’s, he phased straight through the side wall without breaking a stride.

That was a mistake.

Daily, from his little nest of blankets, let out a squeak of alarm. The deck of cards he’d been shuffling burst from his hands with a quiet flitting noise.

Lavender, on the other hand, just stabbed Mercury straight through the chest.

“Whoa!” he shouted, because even though his Semblance kept it from hurting him, _knife through the chest._

Lavender drew back her blade—she had adjoined her knives at the handles to form a sort of double-bladed sword—and rolled her eyes.

“Would it kill you to knock like a normal person?”

“Apparently it might kill me not to,” he grumbled, nodding down at the knife, which was still closer to his chest than he would’ve preferred.

“Sorry,” said Lavender, not sounding particularly sorry. “Been twitchy since…” she trailed off, her eyes straying to Daily, his one remaining ear flicked back over the bandages as he bent forward to gather his cards off the floor.

 _Right. Shit._ Mercury hadn’t considered that phasing through the wall with no warning would be kind of a dick move under the circumstances. He set down his bags and hurried over to Daily, picking up the cards the smaller boy couldn’t reach from his personal blanket fort and stacking them together.

“Thanks,” Daily whispered when Mercury handed the last few to him and his hands went back to shuffling. “It’s good to see you.”

“You too, Day,” said Mercury, settling down on the floor beside him. “You still taking good care of my jacket?”

It was the orange one Mercury had sliced up when he was twelve, the one he’d outgrown a year or so back. Lav and Daily hadn’t had much luck with their thefts the winter before last, so the second Mercury had gotten ahold of the already-too-small black hoodie that he was wearing now, he’d passed the old one off to Daily, who seemed determined to never make it past five-foot-three.

Marcus had made Mercury’s head ring for days for “throwing away” a piece of “his property” without permission.

But those days had kept one of the Mercury’s only friends warm for a year and a half now, so Mercury told himself they’d been well-spent.

“Lavender spilled ketchup on it the other week,” Daily reported gravely. “But that was not my doing.”

Mercury sighed. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you’re gonna room with someone who suffers from chronic butterfingers, you gotta take out insurance. No offense, Knives.”

“Ketchup insurance?” Daily was tilting his head to the side, perplexed, when Lavender cut in.

“Green’s not here,” Lavender said sharply, and Mercury looked up, frowning.

“Didn’t think she was,” he said.

“Oh, so you’re just passing through here on the way _to_ Green’s.” Lavender crossed her arms over her rumpled shirt. “I’d hate to hold you up.”

What the fuck was _with_ her lately?

“No,” he said slowly. “I just came by to check up on you guys. Is that not allowed now?”

One of Lavender’s arms fell, her eyes softening for a second, but then she set her jaw again. “Look, we don’t need your pity, Wolfboy. And it’s not like you need to score points anymore.”

“Points?” Okay, Mercury was truly lost now.

Daily cleared his throat, bugging his eyes out. Lavender gave an eyeroll in reply. Between them, Mercury felt like he was watching a conversation take place in a completely foreign language.

“Look,” he cut in, swinging blindly at what he thought the problem might be, “I know it’s weird since you and Em broke up and I’m on the other side of the divorce or whatever, but it’s not like I don’t wanna be friends with you anymore just ‘cause you and Em fought.”

Lavender’s jaw dropped. “You have to be shitting me right now.”

“About what?”

“She didn’t tell you… You don’t know.” She looked at Daily and said, again, “He doesn’t know.”

“It appears that he does not, indeed, know,” said Daily.

“Look, does one of you guys wanna tell me what the hell is—”

Lavender stepped forward with a determined frown on her face and, before Mercury even had time to be alarmed, rapped her knuckles on his forehead twice.

“Ow!”

“Well, it doesn’t sound hollow, so it must be solid all the way through.” She slumped down cross-legged next to him, a tired look in her eyes. He noticed, now, the dark circles under them. “You really don’t know?”

“Knives, I can assure you that I have no fucking clue what’s going on.”

She snorted. “Good for you.” Her head wobbled forward, her eyes sliding almost shut before she jerked back upright.

“Lavender,” Daily said cautiously, “since Mercury’s here and not here to gloat, maybe now would be a good time for you to get some sleep?”

 _Why the hell would I be gloating about my friend’s ear getting chopped off?_ But given how many weird answers he’d gotten in the space of two minutes, he figured it’d be a good idea to let that question stay shut up in his head.

Lavender shook her head even as it lolled toward her collar. “Nah, Day, ‘M good.”

Daily looked to Mercury. “She’s not good.”

“Gotta agree,” said Mercury. “Have you and Em been sleeping at all?”

“In shifts,” said Lavender. “I maybe pulled one or two extra ones. I didn’t… I didn’t wanna be a bother.”

“Well, you’ve never worried about bothering me,” Mercury said, shrugging. “Snooze away.”

Lavender cast him a look that was almost suspicious and then cracked a smile. “Okay, Wolfboy. I’ll do that.” She glared. “You ditch Day while I’m out, and I’ll gut you.”

And after three years, Mercury knew that that was as close to “Thank you” as Lavender got with him.

“Wouldn’t expect anything less of you, Knives,” he said as she shambled over to the other side of the hut and collapsed facedown on a bedroll.

“Thank you,” Daily whispered. “She—I think she thinks—” his hand strayed toward the bandaged side of his head—“it’s her fault. She… expects ridicule. About a lot of things.”

“Day, no psychoanalysis during naptime,” Lavender grumbled, raising a finger while keeping her face planted in the pillow.

Now _that_ was a sentiment Mercury could get behind.

“You heard her,” he told Daily, but he paused, watching Daily’s remaining ear twitch. More quietly, he added, “What about you?”

Daily looked down at the battered deck of cards poised between his hands. “I…” his face twisted up in something like pain, but then he shook his head. “I would like to play Vacuan Rat Slap.”

Mercury nodded, because he knew what it was like to wish you could skip being hurt, skip remembering. He was trying to skip it right now even, ignoring the bruise Marcus’s boot had left on his stomach last night, the one that was making it hard for him to run at anything faster than a jog.

He gave Daily the best smirk he could summon. “Only if you don’t use your Semblance to cheat and steal extra cards off the top.”

“But of course not,” said Daily, splitting the deck and handing half to Mercury. “And I expect you not to use yours to phase the cards out from under my hand. We are men of honor, after all.”

They both cheated like there was no tomorrow while Lavender snored.

* * *

Emerald had spent the past five days turning plan after plan over and over in her mind. She wanted the bastards who’d hurt Daily to suffer. But more than that, she’d decided, she wanted her friends to be safe.

Brute force hadn’t worked on the bastards, so Emerald was going to try something else.

And if that failed, well. Brute force could be therapeutic.

She kept to the shadows as the moved further and further downtown, making for the balcony on the corner of Ninth where the Golds usually stationed their sentry. Pull one thread just right, and maybe she could make the whole thing unravel.

Emerald crept along the side of the building, low to the ground, headed for the balcony’s corner from its shaded side. The sentry, she hoped, would be watching the main road, like he had been when he’d seen her running past with Daily a few days ago, and not the alley that intersected with it.

With her back pressed to the bricks, Emerald raised one of her revolvers, training it on the stone rail of the balcony that jutted around the corner. With a flick of her thumb, she fired one of her blades, aura scurrying up it and sinking it into the stone. Another flick, and she retracted it, yanking herself into the air—hopefully before the sentry could react.

The barrel of her rusty old revolver shuddered under the strain, and Emerald willed aura through it, telling it to hold strong. She whipped around the corner, and the sentry’s face appeared—a few zits, watery blue eyes, a mouth that was starting to open in a cry of alarm.

Before he could make a sound, Emerald swung her legs forward and brought herself into an arc, both of her boots colliding with his face and slamming him to the ground. Mercury would have been proud. Emerald planted a foot on the sentry’s chest and leveled both revolvers at his face.

“You’re going to take me to your leader,” she said. She refused to word it as a question. “You’re not going to raise any kind of alarm. I offered him an agreement, and he broke it. We’re going to talk.” Adding, “Or I’ll shoot you in the head” seemed kind of crass, so she just said, “Okay?”

The sentry nodded, his eyes wide. Emerald took her foot off his chest but didn’t holster her guns. She circled around behind him.

“Lead the way,” she said. He sat up slowly and shuffled toward a door that opened onto a darkened stairway, which was probably how normal people who didn’t see the world through grappling hooks got up and down. The kid led her down, and Emerald kept _Thief’s_ _Respite_ raised, the blades flicked out in kama form in case the Golds were planning to corner her here.

When they reached the foot of the stairs, Emerald’s guide swallowed. “I—I don’t actually know where he is. The ones of us lower down—we don’t get to know.”

Something about his tone, the waver of it, struck Emerald. This kid was probably a lot like she’d been, once. Skinny, sleeping behind trash heaps, and, if the bruise already forming on his cheek was any indication, totally without aura. Under those conditions, without the power she had, the friends she had, she might have joined up, too.

“Don’t worry,” she said, holstering her revolvers. “You’re not the one I’m pissed at. Just take me to someone who actually knows where he is.”

The kid nodded, his hands shaking, and kept going.

Four blocks later, leaned against the wall of an alley, Emerald spied a familiar green mohawk.

_Of fucking course._

Emerald waved her guide away. “I’ll take it from here. Don’t get yourself in any more trouble than you have to.”

The kid scampered away. “Thank you,” he muttered. “Thank you.”

When he was gone, Emerald squared her shoulders and headed down the alley.

“Russel!” she called, with a sneering false friendliness worthy of Mercury. “Long time, no see!”

He jumped at the sight of her, eyes widening a fraction. Emerald smiled. Both of them knew who the more dangerous person in this alley was, and that person sure as hell wasn’t him.

“W-what do you want?” he said, his hands straying toward his knives.

Emerald was quicker on the draw, her revolvers flashing out before he could so much as touch the handles of his knives.

“I’d like to speak with your manager,” she said. “Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I remember telling you that I’d be very unhappy if your little band of brothers hurt any of my friends. In fact, I _think_ you’re only alive right now because I thought that you and your buddies might listen to my _very_ simple request. So here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna take me straight to your leader, and he and I are gonna have a talk about exactly who runs these streets. Or, you and I can have a rematch of our fight the other day.” Her smile felt sharp-toothed. “And I won’t be in nearly as good a mood.”

Russel’s mouth opened and closed a couple times before he said, “I, uhhh. Yes. I’ll take you there.”

“I appreciate that,” Emerald said coldly, taking a step away but keeping her revolvers pointed at his chest. “After you.” She waited for him to turn away before she holstered them, not wanting to draw the attention of any passing cops and knowing, now, that she could draw faster than Russel could.

Russel led her through the winding alleys of the oldest part of Vale, the city’s ancient, atrophied heart. Some of the paths were still cobbled, with weeds springing up between the cracks. There were almost no shops here—the alleys were too narrow for car traffic and too far from the main road to easily draw people on foot. Stone buildings, most abandoned, rose up on either side of the alleys, making them seem more like the twisting passages of the Labyrinth (she’d read about it in the same book she’d lifted the name for Mercury’s greaves from) than a series of public roadways.

Their path seemed to loop, coiling inward toward a central point, and then they rounded a corner into an open-air plaza, set at the center of a ring of abandoned two-story buildings of pale clay.

Resting in a pyramid shape at the back of the plaza, in front of a building that might once have been some kind of temple, was the biggest mountain of Dust containers Emerald had ever seen.

When she’d asked the Golds for a war, she’d been hoping they wouldn’t actually be ready for one.

The strangest thing about the square, though, was the statue standing in front of the pyramid. It looked carved out of pure gold, and though it must have been as ancient as the buildings around it, it gleamed like new. The figure itself was a small girl with wide, feathery wings, maybe twelve years old, her hands stretched out in entreaty, her mouth half open in a cry of alarm.

Something about it sent a shiver down Emerald’s spine.

Seated in a semicircle on upturned crates in front of the pyramid were three boys, laughing and chatting like people who hadn’t chopped a boy’s ear off earlier in the week. She recognized the dark-haired, silver-belted boy that Daily had bashed off of the roof. She could see now that the arrows in his quiver gave off a glow that suggested Dust, but she’d seen him in combat—they definitely weren’t keeping him this high in their little gang for his fighting skills.

Across from him sat an identical boy, polishing a spiked mace that flickered with fire Dust—the one that had stuck Lavender and Daily in place. He’d be a fighter. Sitting between them, at the head of the circle, was a blond boy with a giant golden sword. His eyes were gold, too, bright enough to be unsettling. He was bigger than the others, tall and broad and smiling.

And Emerald _knew_ him. She knew all of them.

The light glaring on that sword and the knowing glance that passed between the twins threw her memories into sharp relief—Mrs. Copperfield’s favorite, the literal golden boy, the chosen godsdamn hero put on this earth torment the little red-eyed thief and keep her from forgetting her place. The aches that never turned into bruises. The tears none of the grown-ups would believe.

Something small and scared and furious woke up inside of Emerald, and she struggled to shove it back down.

“Rex Aurum and the Janus twins,” she said, letting her voice carry through the plaza. She drew _Thief’s Respite,_ pressed the barrel to the back of Russel’s head. This was probably a good situation to bring a hostage into. “It fucking figures.”

Rex looked up, and at the sight of her, he grinned, getting to his feet. “Russel! You didn’t tell me the problem girl was hot!”

One of the Janus twins—would he be Orion or Meleager? She never could tell them apart—strung his bow. The other shifted his mace into a ready position.

“Well, he didn’t tell me you were ugly,” said Emerald. “So we both went into this with incomplete intel.”

“Wait a minute.” Rex propped a hand on his chin, studying her. “You know me. I _must_ know you. How do I know you, hot problem girl?” His eyes widened, and his face broke into another grin. “Grimm-Eyes! Man, we _wondered_ where you went!”

Okay. Emerald had not banked on the guy who had made her earliest memories living hell for shits and giggles being this genuinely thrilled to see her. Maybe he would be easier to bargain with than she’d thought.

If she wanted to get out of this alive, she really, really needed to not go for the throat with her kamas.

“Behind a dumpster,” she said. “The food was a lot better.”

Rex laughed. “You always were funny. Boys, stand down!”

Both of the Janus twins relaxed, lowering their weapons. In turn, Emerald holstered her revolver, and Russel fled back to his teammates.

Rex sighed. “It’s always good to see an old friend, ain’t it, Orion?”  
  
The Janus twin with the bow startled a little. “Of course.”

“So how come you didn’t tell me when you saw her last week?”

Orion rolled his eyes. “Chief, how many old friends are you able to recognize right after some little Faunus punk punches you in the face with brass knuckles?”

Rex laughed again. In Emerald’s memories, he was always laughing. “You make a good point, ‘Rion. Now budge your ass. Let her sit.” He raised his voice. “Russel, go watch the alleys, would you? I don’t want any unexpected company.”

The pigtailed, skinned-knee version of Emerald that still lived somewhere inside her trembled with rage and fear, but her face, on the outside, was calm as she stepped toward the empty crate that Orion had left behind. Emerald was aware, as she sat down and Orion took up a place behind her shoulder, that Rex had carefully placed his archer right in her blind spot. That he had sent one of his fighters to intercept anyone who might come to help her.

At least some of his relaxed, laughing air was an act, then, and that scared Emerald a little.

“You really should have stuck around, Grimm-Eyes.” Rex leaned toward her when he sat back down, elbows resting on his knees, and Emerald decided that she didn’t like the way his eyes moved over her face. “Copperfield went the extra mile for us, guilted some real rich folks into taking us, just a few months after your little vanishing act. Hospital director for me, hedge fund managers for Rion and Mel. I’m sure she would’ve done the same for you.”

“Copperfield would have locked me in a closet and thrown away the key,” Emerald said, barely managing to keep her voice steady, and shifted away from him as much as the narrow space of the crate allowed. “Now, we have business to talk about, don’t we?”

“Oh, you don’t wanna talk to your old pal? Fine, fine.” He held his hands up in surrender. “Business only. What can I do for you, Grimm-Eyes?”

“For one, you can stop calling me that.” She scowled. “I have a name, you know.”

“Yeah!” said Rex. “Of course, um…” He frowned, tapping his chin. “Uh…”

“Oh my gods, you have no idea, do you?”

“Ermine? Ellie? Eggplant?”

Okay, now he was just being an asshole.  
  
_“Emerald,”_ she said testily, her composure cracking a little. “And why are you so thrilled to see someone you actively hated as a kid?”

Rex scoffed, incredulous. “You mean because I picked on you?”

 _Because you hit me, you fucking piece of shit, because you’d pull my hair so hard that some of it ripped out of my head and then you’d_ laugh.

He was laughing now, the memory echoing. “Gr—Emerald, you’ve gotta know I only did that ‘cause I thought you were cute!”

Rage struck Emerald dumb, made her tongue freeze to the roof of her mouth. It took her a moment to swallow her anger, and she felt it lodge icily in her throat. All the shame and ridicule that had kept her awake at night when she was little, that had made her feel puny and worthless, was a _game_ to him. A thing to look back at and laugh.

 _I think I might have to kill you,_ she thought.

“Maybe we should focus on the present,” she said calmly, even as her vision went fuzzy at the edges. “Specifically the fact that I sent you terms for peace and you ignored them.”

“Oh, that.” Rex shrugged. “We never agreed to your terms. And besides, kid’s probably healed up just fine by now.”  
  
“You sawed his ear off like a fucking animal, Rex,” said Emerald. “That’s never going to be fine.”

Rex chuckled. “Emerald, I dunno if you’ve taken a look at your friends lately, but I’m pretty sure they were the only animals in that alley.”

The Janus twins laughed.

Emerald’s jaw clenched. He was winding her up, trying to make her snap, and _gods,_ she wanted to. She wanted this shrinking feeling inside her to stop. The knot in her throat tightened. It felt like the golden statue behind Rex was screaming in her place. Meleager was leaning forward with a hand on his mace, like he was ready to strike the second she gave him an excuse.

Emerald wouldn’t give him one.

“I’m here to name new terms,” Emerald said. “And if you follow them, we’ll be out of your hair forever.”

Rex sat back, giving Emerald a sliver more space. She didn’t relax. “I’m listening.”

“The diamonds we stole last week were to buy my friends an apartment outside of your territory. We attacked you to buy them time to get their rent squared away so they could move in without worrying about whether or not you’d pull some kind of stunt. After that, you’d have never heard from us again.” Her mouth pressed into a line. “But you made that impossible when you mugged them. The deal’s this. You give us the diamonds back, plus three weeks of free rein to get them all settled in their new place, and then the streets are all yours.”

“And you?” Rex asked. “Surely you want something, Emerald.” He said her name like it belonged to him.

Emerald glared. “I want to be left alone. I want the right to do my work wherever I want in this city. I’ve been doing this for eight years without getting caught, and I’m not about to start now. I won’t bring any extra police attention down on your little boys’ club.”

Rex’s grin widened, gloating. “And what about that boyfriend of yours? Russel tells me he put a pretty good dent in one of our squadrons, and not a one of our contacts can get any kind of read on him. What’s his stake in it?”

There was enough at stake in this conversation that Emerald wasn’t even going to bother contesting the boyfriend thing. Besides, letting it stand might make Rex stop looking at her the way she looked at a pound cake.

“He’s our enforcer,” said Emerald, careful not to give up Mercury’s name. They hadn’t earned it. “If you break our terms, I can guarantee you that he’ll put a dent in more than just one squadron. So. What do you say?”

Rex smirked. “I’d say those sound like mighty good terms. But we already fenced the diamonds, and we already spent the money.” He nodded back at the pyramid. “It got us a couple crates.”

Emerald frowned, her thoughts racing. “Give us the Dust, then,” she said. “The Dust you bought with the money. We can use it to plan one last job, big enough that we’ll have the funds to get out of your hair. We’d need a couple more weeks of a grace period, but the terms could stand.”

Rex’s smile faded, and Emerald could almost hear the gears turning in his head. “Suppose you just use the Dust to attack us?”

Emerald sighed, exasperated. “Not everyone is trying to run this city, Rex. Most of us are just trying to survive it. Just give us what we need to survive.” She looked into those shallow gold eyes and nearly gagged on the next word. “Please.”

Rex’s grin was sharper now—it was the same look of triumph he’d worn whenever he shoved her to the floor hard enough that she started crying. It was the look of someone who was sure that he’d won, and she wanted to punch it off of his face.

“You know, Grimm-Eyes,” said Rex. “I might just be in the mood to do an old friend a favor. Orion! Grab her whatever she asks for.”

Meleager still had his eyes trained on Emerald, waiting for her to make a move. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, not when she had a chance to get out of here clean.

“Ooh!” said Rex. “Let her see the new fire rounds!”

Orion shifted out of Emerald’s blind spot, and she relaxed a hair. Her shoulders tightened back up when Orion set the case of rounds in Rex’s hands instead of her own. Rex snapped open the clasps and held the case open to her.

“State of the art,” he said proudly. “Double-explosive fire rounds. We’ve already loaded Mel up with them.”

“Define ‘double-explosive,’” said Emerald with a sinking feeling as she reached out and picked up a single round.

“Fireburst on contact, obviously,” said Rex. She wondered if Mel and Russel and Orion were even allowed to talk for more than a sentence per hour. “But when that layer goes off, there’s a second one. Activates when it comes in contact with aura, so, if it gets through, the target can’t raise it again after they’re hit.” He laughed. “At least, not unless they wanna turn their insides out.”

Emerald’s stomach went cold. That second, aura-activated layer would be useless on Grimm. The only thing these bullets would be good for was killing aura-ed humans. Killing Huntsmen.

What the fuck was Rex playing at?

The knot in her throat was constricting, but she just said, “May I?”

When Rex nodded, Emerald slid six of the rounds into her left-hand revolver, because if Rex godsdamn Aurum was going to have irresponsibly powerful weapons, she might as well have them, too. Mel’s hand strayed toward his mace.

“Chillax, Mel,” said Rex. “Emerald’s too smart to mess with us. Isn’t that right, gorgeous?”

“That’s right.” Emerald’s voice went tight. She looked up at Orion. “Grav Dust. Crystals and rounds both.” Thinking of Mercury’s greaves and his constant muttering about how they could be improved, she added, “and air rounds.”

“Pretty modest,” said Rex. “Streets have taught you not to ask for much, huh, Grimm-Eyes?”

“I know how to do a lot with a little,” she said, taking the grav rounds out of Orion’s hands and loading six into her right-hand revolver.

“But see, Grimm-Eyes, I can do even more with a _lot.”_ Suddenly, Rex was holding out his sword, razor-sharp and level with her neck. Emerald forced herself not to cringe. “Take a good look. Atlesian ore. Top of the line. It can shoot a hard-light Dust ray over four blocks. This blade’s worth more than the whole orphanage. I wanted it, so I got it. You take what you deserve, and Copperfield taught me I deserve whatever I want.”

So _that_ was the sort of monster he was. Emerald stayed motionless until Rex lowered his blade from the pulse that pounded in her throat.

Orion handed the next two containers over, and Rex watched her, studying, as she checked both, then clipped the small case of air Dust to one side of her holster and the box that held three glowing purple grav crystals to the other. She could already see how the crystals could fit into the handles of Lavender’s knives—they’d be like the Grimm Reaper’s twin kamas.

She managed to crack a smile at the thought.

“Now, that’s better,” said Rex. “I was almost starting to think you didn’t like me, Grimm-eyes, and that would have been a shame.” He clapped a hand onto Emerald’s knee and her entire body went rigid, falling back into the dim and flickering lights of the gas stations she’d had to rob when she was twelve.

“‘Cause if you were to take all this Dust and betray me after I’ve been so nice to you, I’d have to do something about it.” His hand tightened, and Emerald’s breath hitched, struggling to slip past all the rage and terror she’d been trying to swallow down. She felt frozen in place even as she plummeted back in time. Worthless. Small.

“You know we’ve got no trouble dealing with your little Faunus pals, and as for your boyfriend, I hear his fighting style’s kick-based.” Rex’s sword caught the light and glowed ominously. “I wonder how well he’d fight if Mel here glued those pesky greaves to the ground. Isn’t that right, Mel?”

Meleager smirked. From his pocket, he pulled a small gold triangle with soft, fuzzy edges, polished it on his shirt.

Emerald’s stomach lurched.

It was Daily’s ear, the same one that had brushed Emerald’s chin whenever she hugged him. They’d turned it, somehow, into gold. They’d taken the haunted look in Daily’s eyes and the bloodstains he’d left on Emerald’s pillow, and they had made a trophy of them.

Her eyes fell again on the statue of the winged girl, the way her fingers spread wide in fear, the petrified outline of a tear frozen halfway down her cheek.

“How?” Emerald’s voice was a shuddering whisper, and she hated how weakly it rang in her ears, but it was all she could get out over the horrible roiling feeling in her chest. “Who was she?”

“Who, Cally?” He nodded back at the statue. “Oh, don’t lose your lunch, Grimm-Eyes, she was really just a PR stunt.”

Emerald looked at the murdered girl standing behind Rex, at the fear made permanent in her eyes.

“A PR stunt,” she echoed bitterly. She wanted to fight. She wanted to scream, but fear had a frigid steel grip on her torso, locking her arms to her sides. Why had she come here alone? Why had she been so stupid? She couldn’t strike a deal with these monsters. But here she was in their lair, and nobody knew how to find her, and—

Emerald winced as Rex’s hand tightened around her knee, as it glowed gold and scalding.

“Well,” he said, “good old Dr. Gordias figured, if he took in one stray and it went so well, why not a second? My Semblance made him richer than ever, and he figured taking in a little Faunus runaway would get him some good press.” Emerald’s aura was flickering under Rex’s hand, struggling to hold back his Semblance. Her heart was beating so fast she felt dizzy, thundering frantically against the icy band of fear that held her motionless.

“You got jealous.” Her voice was so hollow that she wasn’t even sure that she was the one making the words.

Rex’s eyes went hard. “She was taking what was mine. And if you do the same, Grimm-Eyes, I think you’ll make a real pretty addition to the gallery.”

Emerald couldn’t tear her eyes from Rex’s hand. Her own hands hung limp at her sides, _Thief’s Respite_ an inert weight pulling them down. Rage was shaking her vision to pieces. Bastard thought everything he wanted would just fall into his hands, thought he had the right to kill people to make that happen.

And after all the years she’d spent fighting and grifting and dragging herself out of the muck hand over hand, he thought Emerald was going to fall into them, too.

“And I’d hate that, Grimm-Eyes, because I’m starting to like having you alive—” another squeeze of the hand, and the aura over her knee fizzled out, and her skin _burned,_ and something inside of Emerald woke up and growled—“I mean, your boyfriend’s not even _solid_ half the time, is he? I think I could give you something more—”

Emerald shot him in the face.

She did it with her left hand, the one whose revolver was loaded with the explosive fire rounds. The hand gripping her leg splayed out like a dying tarantula as its owner sprawled backward onto the cobblestones with a cry of pain and rage.

She wasn’t the scared little kid that was his to terrorize anymore.

Orion’s bow twanged.

Emerald rolled to the side as an arrow whistled through the space where her head had just been. Before Rex could recover, she lashed out with her Semblance in two directions, seizing Mel and Orion’s minds at the same time and straining her own. The temptation to run as far as she could as fast as she could was agonizing, her heart drumming in her chest and rattling her head, but she couldn’t do that yet.

She couldn’t leave the kind of person that Rex was with this much power.

At the back of the plaza, Russel drew a knife and raised it to throw, and Rex, still sprawled on his back, struggled to reach his sword. He couldn’t get to his feet, though, because Meleager’s Semblance had him stuck to the ground like a bug on a corkboard. Where Rex lay, Mel had seen Emerald making a desperate run for the pile of Dust.

With her right hand, Emerald fired a grav round straight down into the cobblestones. The recoil launched her nearly twenty feet into the air, sending her flipping end over end, earth and sky revolving before her eyes. She caught a glimpse of Russel, in the instant before the knife could leave his hand, as Orion’s arrow, seeking out an illusion of Emerald fleeing the plaza, caught him in the ribs and exploded.

 _I can do this._ The Vytal festival when she was ten, the effortless way Lunette Fontaigne had soared through the trees—the massive explosion that had taxed the defensive capabilities of even Amity Arena—Emerald needed that now.

She shifted her weight, turning her vertical flips into a spinning log roll right above the pyramid of munitions. With her left hand, she fired two explosive rounds straight down, and a split second later, when her right arm was parallel to the ground, she fired with that hand, launching herself out of the massive explosion that her last shot had created the second fire met Dust.

The blast was deafening, sending up a cloud of noxious, multi-colored smoke that ate up the entire plaza. Even with her gravity bullet launching her out of the worst of it, the explosion slammed Emerald backward, and she crashed into the surface of a rooftop three houses away, rolling and skidding to a halt just before she could slide off the edge and tumble into the street.

Even though her aura held, she swayed as she got to her feet, her head pounding from the effort of maintaining two illusions at once.

There were shouts of panic and confusion from the plaza. Amid the smoke, Emerald could make out fire in colors she’d never imagined burning and belching out sparks and licking past the roofline before destroying it altogether.

Emerald found herself smiling. It wasn’t a happy smile, exactly. It was a smile made of anger and gunsmoke and _done._

That raging pillar of flame was what Rex Aurum got for thinking that he would _ever_ be able to control her.

Not bad.

Emerald holstered _Thief’s Respite_ and flitted off across the rooftops, her feet as light as the day she’d left the orphanage behind.

She tried not to give too much thought to the stiff gold handprint burned into her knee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I'm sure this situation won't escalate in any way...
> 
> Tune in next week for the anxiety and mutual pining extravaganza that is Em and Merc's thirty-first half-birthday!
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading, and I'm excited to talk with you guys in the comments when I'm finally free of pie drudgery (which, to be fair, is my favorite kind of drudgery) :D


	16. Never Outrun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Local Idiots So in Love It's Getting Embarrassing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> V8 spoilers: Did this chapter end up a thousand words longer than intended because I found out what went down in V8C4 and needed to process my anger at and disappointment with Hazel (like seriously dude, what the HELL. I'm ashamed I trusted you to look out for the murder children) by letting Mercury side-eye him for several pages? Yes. Yes it did. /end spoilers
> 
> On a more fun note, this story is now past 100k words! I truly never anticipated that my lunacy would reach these depths, and I'm so grateful to each and every person who has read this far. You guys really are the best :D
> 
> cw: graphic depictions of violence, more than canon-typical gun violence, gendered insults

Mercury was in the process of doing a pretty respectable job of keeping the frosting from blowing up when he felt a shiver run up his spine. The Seer Grimm. He was old enough to call it by its name now, even if he still had no fucking clue how it worked.

No snide comment straight out of the gate, so not Watts. Not the quickly stifled laughter of Callows trying to be stealthy. So it must be—

Mercury sighed, keeping his back turned as his lip curled. “How ya doing, Hazel?”

“Well. You?”

_Well, I’m still trapped here with my shitheel of a father, so what do you fucking think, big guy?_ Watts annoyed Mercury, and Callows scared him, but Hazel made him _angry._ Because Hazel pretended to care.

In the months after he’d first shown up in the ominous black surface of the Seer Grimm, he’d taken to floating up to Mercury when Marcus was gone, asking him if everything was okay (was _anything_ okay was probably a better question), if there was anything he could do to help.

And in the glow of his shiny new Semblance and the freedom it brought and the memory of Vardan Roosevelt trusting his words, Mercury had been honest. He didn’t want the guy fussing over him constantly, so he told him about his Semblance. He told him about Emerald, because he’d never had anyone to talk to about her before.

And Hazel had listened.

He still listened. But it had been three years now. Three years of Hazel sitting by while Mercury fished bandages out of a box to patch himself back together. Three years of him watching Mercury hide everything that mattered to him in the walls so that Marcus couldn’t tear it to pieces.

And Hazel had done fucking nothing to change that. He was big, Mercury knew, not that it was easy to tell when all he ever saw of the guy was his disembodied face, and the fact that he spoke from the other side of the Seer Grimm meant that he had to be powerful, too.

In three years, he hadn’t seen fit to use that power to stop what was happening right in front of his eyes.

Sure, he was nice to Mercury. Sure, he saddled Marcus with extra missions to keep him out of the house. That didn’t change the fact that Maura Ellwood had taken one look at the scar on Mercury’s hand and put her life on the line and lost it to try and take Marcus down while Hazel had seen the aftermath of three years of beatings and had apparently decided that keeping a hired gun was more important than making those beatings stop.

Just because Hazel wanted to feel like a good person didn’t mean he was one, and Mercury was smart enough to know the difference.

“Just peachy, Hazel,” said Mercury. “Never better.”

The shitty thing was that that was kind of true. The kitchen smelled like chocolate, and he’d had a good breakfast, and he got to spend the day with Em. If he just shut out the fact that Marcus would be back tomorrow, everything would be perfect.

But Marcus would be back tomorrow.

“I’m… glad to hear that,” said Hazel, floating around to hover beside Mercury’s elbow and stubbornly ignoring the sarcasm in his voice. “Your frosting seems to be behaving itself.”

Hazel had been Mercury’s unofficial lab tech for the failed frosting experiment—Tukson didn’t carry cookbooks in fonts that didn’t suck, so it sometimes helped to have someone check his measurements, even if that someone was Hazel—and cleaning boiled fudge off the surface of an eldritch abomination that was trying to offer him words of encouragement was definitely in the top three most surreal experiences of Mercury’s life.

“Yeah,” said Mercury, “and my gift for Em’s all sewed up, so as soon as this beeps—” he nudged the oven with his foot—“I’ll frost it and be out of here.”

_And not talking to you anymore._

“Is there anything I can do to—”

“Nope,” said Mercury. The oven timer went off, saving him from elaborating, and he grabbed a dish towel and used it to pick up the sheet cake, then kicked the oven door shut again. He grabbed up the saucepan of frosting before it could get temperamental again and emptied it over the cake, letting it spread across the surface. “Got it covered.”

“You certainly do,” said Hazel. “My sister liked that kind very much.”

“She had good taste, then,” said Mercury, because he wasn’t stupid enough to speak ill of a dead chick in front of her big brother.

“She did.” There was an awkward silence. “Are you sure there’s nothing I—”

“You already asked, big guy,” said Mercury. “And the answer’s the same.”

_You_ could _tear my father in half like one of Em’s sour straws and give me a kitchen that you could actually visit, so you could actually try my fucking cake instead of just saying it looks good through your creepy pet jellyfish to make yourself feel better._

And that, right there, was the thing about Hazel that pissed Mercury off the most: the fact that it was so painfully easy to imagine him being better than Marcus, and the fact that he would never give enough of a shit to act on it.

“I’m gonna get changed,” Mercury said before Hazel could speak again. “Try not to fuck up my cake with your tentacles, yeah?”

He sped out of the kitchen and through the empty doorway of his room. In the corner by the head of his mattress, the one that afforded him the most cover, he unzipped the duffel bag he took on missions and pulled out his new jacket.

He’d shot up like a weed over the past year and a half, and even though he was still lanky and awkward and hadn’t really grown into the height yet, even Marcus had been forced to admit that buying Mercury some clothes that he hadn’t completely outgrown might be necessary to maintaining their cover.

So, on their last job, way up in the north of Sanus, not far, Mercury thought, from the mountains where he’d grown up, Marcus had shoved a fistful of lien into Mercury’s hand, punched him in the gut, and told him not to waste it on anything stupid.

The jacket Mercury had ended up with was short-sleeved, so he’d need to cut up his old jacket for arm wrappings, but it was warm, and he liked the sharp grey and black of it and the way it could zip all the way up to his chin and shield his throat.

It was the first piece of clothing he’d ever gotten to buy for himself, and he kind of loved it, not that he’d let Marcus know that. He’d actually wasted a good eight minutes last night looking at himself in the cracked bathroom mirror and coming to the slow, giddy realization that he looked _cool_ if he just ignored the ugly-ass brown pants he was stuck with.

He was excited for Emerald to see it.

_Wait. Shit. Where did that come from?_ he thought as he tugged the old jacket off over his head and hastily pulled the new one into place. He hurried to tease his hair back into the right kind of disorder. Before he could successfully locate the source of that weird, unearned, floaty feeling in his chest, it changed shape and twisted, going sharp, turning, inexplicably, into “ _Oh gods, what if Em hates it?”_

Okay. Okay. He was a professional. He could prepare for this. He was good at managing risks. Okay. Maybe zipping it all the way up to his chin was weird—why did it feel so crucial that he look not-weird?. Anyway, he wasn’t going to get unexpectedly throat-punched during a picnic with his best friend. Getting unexpectedly throat-punched was a strictly indoor activity for Mercury.

He tried unzipping it down to the base of his throat. On the right, he folded the collar down, letting the grey of it show, and _huh._ He liked that. Maybe—maybe Em would too.

_She’s not even going to notice, idiot._

But—he wanted to be sure. And there was only one person in the house to give a second opinion. Mercury dawdled as much as he could, cutting up the old jacket and wrapping the scraps around the newer scars on his arms, before he made his way back to the kitchen.

He tried not to look at Hazel too much as he lowered the still-cooling cake into the bag, as he set two forks alongside it, tucked against Emerald’s carefully folded gift.

“Uh, hey,” he said, and he hoped to gods he sounded more relaxed than he felt, “it’s, uh, not a big deal or anything, but do you—do I—the new jacket, does it look—okay?” He started shoving all the cake ingredients he’d had to steal on his own time—the cocoa and the cinnamon and the powdered sugar—into another bag.

Hazel circled around to face him, and he at least seemed to be taking Mercury’s dumb question seriously.

He nodded. “It does.” With a knowing look that Mercury didn’t care for at all, he added, “and I’m sure Emerald will agree.”

Mercury did not know that it was possible for him to say “Okay” and “Thanks” and “Goodbye” simultaneously before phasing through the wall like his life depended on it while his face burned, but apparently it was. He emerged into the garage workshop, which was scroll-locked and strictly off-limits to Mercury when Marcus was away.

Mercury’s Semblance had a thing or two to say about that.

He crossed to the cupboard where Marcus kept his greaves locked up when they weren’t on missions or doing weapons training and phased a hand through, drawing out _Talaria._ Eh, the name still felt cheesy to him, but he’d try it for a day.

After all the hours he’d had to spend locked up in this room with Marcus and a bunch of hot and sharp objects to forge them, his greaves probably deserved a name, he thought as he clasped them on.

He phased out the garage door, dropped his contraband baking supplies in the ice chest he kept in the empty house two doors down, and took off toward downtown at a run.

For birthdays, they didn’t meet at Emerald’s place. Instead, Mercury traced his steps back to the dinky little grocery store where they’d first met, vaulted up onto the rooftops, and made the run to the brownstone building where they still trained sometimes, the place where they’d told each other their names.

Emerald was waiting for him when he got there, pacing the ground at the foot of the big antenna.

“Hey, you,” she said, her face lighting up, and something awful happened in Mercury’s chest.

“Hey, you,” he said back. That was safe, right? That was a normal thing to say?

He’d thought, when he was twelve, that he’d successfully killed the part of himself that thought about how shiny Emerald’s hair was when the sun caught it and wondered how her laugh would feel against his ear, his neck.

But in the actually-not-that-awful-ness of the past three years, things had started to slide. Without Marcus constantly breathing down his neck, Mercury could be someone else. Someone who baked cakes and put up with Cypress’s needling and played cards with his friends when they were hurt.

He wasn’t even sure that that someone, that guy he could become when Marcus was gone, was even real, but he seemed like he might be kind of decent.

Might be able to hold Em close without hurting her.

“New shirt!” said Emerald with a nod of approval.

“Oh, yeah,” said Mercury. “New shirt.”

Emerald smiled. “It suits you,” she said, and he felt suddenly warm down to his toes. “Way better than the orange, at least.”

“I, uh, thanks.” How did she make him this stupid? “Cake?”

“Please,” she said, taking the bag from his hand and sitting cross-legged on the ground. “What kind this year?”

Mercury knelt and lifted the cake, pan and all, out of the bag. “Sheet cake. Chocolate.” He smirked. “I expect you to appreciate the truly heroic effort I put into making sure the frosting didn’t explode.”

“Do you now?” Emerald asked, picking up a fork.

“Hey, I asked Cypress for _help_ ,” he said, fighting back a laugh. “I don’t do that shit lightly.”

Emerald took a bite, then closed her eyes in thought. Mercury waited for the verdict.

“So?” he prompted.

“So, I take back every mean thing I’ve ever said about your hair, and I’m willing to offer you the soul of my firstborn child.” Emerald grinned. “It’s great, Merc, really.”

“Oh, thank gods,” said Mercury. “Firstborn souls are so hard to come by these days.”

The cake demanded silence of them, for a little while, and when enough sugar had entered Mercury’s bloodstream that he felt itchy and jittery, he stood up and started throwing punches, then kicks, sparring with the air and burning off energy. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Emerald watching him, and it took him all of twenty seconds to succumb to the urge to show off. Fighting was one of the only things Mercury trusted himself not to screw up—at least, not by any measure that anyone but Marcus would be capable of noticing—and it was nice to move and have nothing at stake, to have Em’s laugh and the cool spring wind be the only sounds that mattered.

He leapt up, snapping off a few spinning kicks before he coiled back to the ground, rolling up on his hands and wheeling his legs through the air, shifting and replacing his hands as his momentum changed to keep that speeding, circular motion going.

Marcus had said the move was impractical and needlessly flashy, because Marcus was a sack of shit with no imagination.

Emerald whooped and applauded, and Mercury spun down onto his back, letting friction slow him to a halt and then flinging his arms wide.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, I’ll be here all week,” he said.

“And you do birthday parties!” He could hear Emerald’s grin in her voice.

He rolled up so he was sitting. “Yep.” He frowned. “I could also do some really amazing violence with that one if Dad would just break down and decide that buying me some air Dust isn’t ‘frivolous.’”

A sheepish smile crossed Emerald’s face. “So, uh, about that…” She handed him a smooth metal case that had been lying on the ground beside her, and with a strange feeling of foreboding, he opened it.

A month’s worth of air Dust rounds were layered neatly inside of the box, gleaming silver and deadly.

“Emerald, what the _fuck?”_ said Mercury, lifting a single bullet and staring at it in awe. It was SDC-grade, absolutely flawless, the kind they only sold in the nicest shops.

“Happy half-birthday?” said Emerald with a growing look of unease, and Mercury felt a twinge of suspicion.

“Em, how did you even get these?” he said, already loading them into his greaves, because _gods_ they were nice, and the box would be too big to hide inside his bedroom wall. He could leave it with Emerald. She was always looking for places to plant new Atrocities.

She ducked her head. “Oh, you know. Crimes.”

“Yeah, but… rounds this nice would mean bigger crimes than usual. What did you do?” There was something about the way she was turning away from him, holding one arm with the other, that made him worry.

“Yeah, I—” There was a nervous spark in her red eyes—“I might have gone after the Golds.”

Instantly, Mercury found himself scanning her for injuries, for newly healed cuts, but except for a bandana wrapped over the left knee of her tights, she looked just like she had when he’d seen her last week.

It took him about two seconds to move from being relieved that she wasn’t hurt to being angry that she could have gotten herself hurt.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he burst out. “We’re supposed to be a team, right?”

“I figured, if I told you, you’d have a lot of good reasons for why I shouldn’t do it,” she said, looping her arms around her knees and making herself small. “And I just wanted to _hurt_ them.”

“Did you?” he asked. “Hurt them?”

Emerald smiled grimly. “They had a literal mountain of Dust munitions. I grabbed some souvenirs for my friends and then blew it sky-high. I didn’t really see what happened to them after it went up, but I doubt they all made it out with their looks intact.” She snorted. “Not that their looks were great to begin with.”

Mercury smirked and went in for a jab. “Wish I’d been there. You could’ve at least sent a postcard.”

“I know,” she said, hanging her head. “I should’ve brought you. It—it was a lot scarier than I thought it’d be.”

The worry came rushing back. He hated how easy it was for him to forget that not being wounded wasn’t the same as not being hurt for Emerald, and the way she was curled up on herself, Em looked _hurt._

“Are you okay?” he asked, reaching out a hand in case Emerald wanted something to hold onto. She liked that when she was nervous, he knew. He’d seen Lavender do it. He was getting better at that kind of thing, at reaching out. Something inside of him always flinched when he did it, and maybe it always would, but for Emerald, at least, he could push through it.

She caught his hand with both of hers, and even through her gloves, he could feel them shaking. She closed her eyes for a minute, brow furrowing, and pressed his hand tightly between her own.

When she opened her eyes, they were focused and steady. The shaking had stopped.

“Their leader,” she said. “I knew him. His cronies too. He was Mrs. Copperfield’s favorite. She—she liked it when he picked on me. Thought it kept me humble. I think—I think she really wanted me to feel like I belonged to him.” Her eyes narrowed, her jaw locking up. “And when I saw him yesterday, he was so _happy_ to see his old chew-toy, and he just kept pushing me, like he wanted me to snap, and I thought I could stay calm, I thought I could use him to make a deal.”

Her hands were trembling again, and anger was pooling in Mercury’s chest.

“But he wouldn’t stop pushing, and then he _touched_ me.” Mercury’s hand tightened around hers. He’d seen the way guys walking down the street looked at Emerald. He’d heard the way Marcus talked about women when he was drunk, and he hated, _hated_ that guys like that had the power to make his best friend curl into a ball and shiver this way.

Emerald went silent.

“And?” he whispered. She was shaking all over with what he realized now wasn’t fear but rage.

_I should have been there._

“And then. Um.” Emerald’s fingers twitched and freed his hand, which felt suddenly cold. She reached down and untied the bandana over her knee. It fell away to reveal a golden handprint set into her skin, glaring harshly under the sunlight. Even at a glance, Mercury could tell it wasn’t paint.

“What the fuck?” he whispered. His fingers inched toward the mark before pulling back.

“Their leader, Rex, his Semblance—he can turn the things he touches into gold.”

Mercury stared at the mark, understanding bringing rage and horror with it. The fingers of the golden handprint were curled and clenched, digging into Emerald’s skin and refusing to let her go.

“They had Daily’s ear,” Emerald went on. “All shiny and frozen, and—and a girl.”

“You don’t mean…”

“I mean a whole girl, turned into a statue. She—” Emerald bit her lip—“she looked really scared. And if it was anything like—like my knee… it must have hurt so much.” Emerald’s voice dwindled away to nothing.

“Oh gods, Em.” Mercury reached out with both hands but froze before they could get to her, not sure what he wanted to do. Okay, well, he knew what he _wanted_ to do. He wanted to hug her until her voice came back, but he’d never actually started a hug before and what if he did it wrong, and Em looked so _small,_ and—

Emerald had stretched out her hands in the same, hesitant way, and they met in the middle, fingers pressing and lacing together, and that was enough, feeling that she was solid and here and safe with him.

It was almost too much. Mercury struggled to keep his hands steady. Em needed steady right now.

“So,” he said, trying to make his voice soft, “what happened then?”

“I shot him between the eyes,” said Emerald matter-of-factly.

“That sounds about right,” Mercury said, feeling a grim satisfaction.

“I mean, he survived,” she said. “Aura. But… but I wish he hadn’t.” She bit her lip. “Is that bad?”

And Mercury was absolutely certain that he was not in any kind of position to be a moral authority, so he shrugged, and he said what he knew.

“I’m glad you didn’t kill him. Because I wanna be there when you do.”

Emerald let out a faint laugh. “We’re gonna make really bad Huntsmen.”

“Oh, undoubtedly.” Mercury smirked. He thought for a moment. “What you did, though—busting a ring of shitheads and destroying their munitions—that sounds like Huntress stuff to me.”

“And I did redistribute what I stole,” Emerald said, a stronger smile starting to take hold. “You’ve got your air rounds, and I gave Lav the grav crystals I took this morning.”

“See? Genuine hero material,” he said. Feeling his ears go red, he added, “Can I have my hands back?”

“Oh! Yeah!” She glanced away for a second, letting his hands fall from hers. “Sorry.”

Mercury shrugged it off. “Just needed to grab something.” He twisted around and caught the bag he’d brought from home, setting it in front of Emerald.

“Here,” he said, “since you’re doing Huntress things.” He hid the lower half of his face behind his knees while she reached into the bag, waiting to see what she’d think.

He watched her lift up the circle of white cloth, watched her eyes widen as they flitted over the side that he couldn’t see but that he knew as well as the back of his own hand after all the hours of thread he’d spent on it.

It had been nice to spend his sewing on something other than patching his clothes after Marcus had slashed through them with a broken bottle.

“Merc, you shouldn’t have,” Emerald said, her voice soft with amazement in a way that told Mercury that he definitely should’ve.

“Eh, it was nothing,” he said, trying not to smile too broadly. “Besides, I can’t have my partner at Beacon walking around without a good emblem.”

Emerald laid the cloth out on the ground, smoothing it with her fingers as she examined the jagged black scraps of fabric sewn into the white so that they formed a gemstone, gleaming with green thread in a few places where the light would catch.

“Is it an emerald?” Em asked, smirking a little.

“Not quite,” said Mercury. “It’s… I know how much you like that one Vacuan legend with the street thief and the lamp and stuff. So, I thought maybe it could be a diamond in the rough.”

“You know,” said Emerald, “you sometimes make it very difficult for me not to tackle-hug you.”

“It’s good?” he asked. He’d been kind of nervous about doing something as big as designing an emblem. He knew that they were supposed to be personal, that they had a way of sticking to their owners, and he really hoped he wasn’t going to stick Emerald with something that she didn’t like but was too nice to turn down. “You don’t have to think it’s good. You can think it’s shitty.”

Emerald laughed. “It’s good. Like, I want to start wearing this thing right this second.” She frowned. “How do I wear it?”

“I was thinking you could pin it to the back of your shirt,” Mercury said, upending the bag and catching the safety pins that fell out of it, the ones he’d spray-painted red for the occasion.

“Well, get on it!” said Emerald, turning around and sweeping her hair over her shoulder so that her back was clear.

“Um,” said Mercury, who had not planned for this contingency. “ _You_ could pin it.”

“Mercury,” she said testily. “I do not have eyes in the back of my head, and I am _not_ going to take my shirt off on this roof.”

That last suggestion sent a strong enough shot of panic through Mercury that his brain lurched back into gear and threw out a self-preserving joke. “Look, I just don’t want you whining about it for the next year if I stab you by accident.”

“I’m tough,” said Emerald. “I can take it.” She shot an imperious glance over her shoulder. “But you are _not_ going to stab me.”

“Not if you hold still,” he grumbled. He picked up the emblem, hesitating for a moment.

Usually, when he touched Emerald, it was either her grabbing his hand like she had a minute ago, or it happened too quickly for him to have time to think about it—an arm flung around her waist as she grappled them out of an alley, a hand catching her wrist before she could run out of sight in a crowd.

Any longer than that, and Marcus had a chance to start talking. Marcus didn’t talk in words, exactly, but it was easy for his training to guide Mercury’s eyes, his hands, to show him all the ways that a touch could turn violent.

_If you wanted to hurt her…_ Marcus seemed to say, and no matter how much Mercury snarled to himself that he would never want to hurt her, Marcus wouldn’t stop being there, in his head, telling him how, making him envision how easy it would be to turn an embrace into a chokehold, a smile into a scream.

The safety pins beside Mercury’s knee glistened with intent. He forced himself to ignore them, for now, and with both hands, he pressed the emblem to the back of Emerald’s olive green shirt. He smoothed it out, trying to center it in the right spot, in that divot between her shoulder blades. Was it her heartbeat he was feeling through the cloth, or his own echoed back?

He didn’t want to reach for those bloodred pins. He wanted to slump forward and slide his arms around Emerald’s waist and press his forehead into the wispy green hairs that clung to the back of her neck.

His hands had actually started to track forward across the emblem for a second before he inched them back, remembering that holding her, if she didn’t want him to, was its own kind of violence, one she was sick to death of.

Emerald shivered, her shoulders rolling a little under his fingers, like she’d heard his thoughts.

“Sorry,” he said, the swell of shame blotting out Marcus for long enough that he could reach for one of the pins without flinching and get to work.

“It’s, uh, it’s okay,” Emerald’s voice was a little higher than usual. One of her hands had sprung up and was fidgeting with her hair.

It only took him a couple minutes to get all the pins set, but by the end of that time, his hands were shaking so badly that Emerald really was lucky that he hadn’t jabbed her by mistake.

“Got it!” he said, crossing his arms so that his hands wouldn’t show.

“Totally stab-free,” said Emerald, turning around, “knew you had it in you. Did it look okay?”

Mercury tilted his head to the side. “I mean, I _am_ biased in favor of my own brilliant handiwork.”

Emerald raised an eyebrow. “Honesty?”

“It looks good on you,” he said. _Everything looks good on you._ “You look like someone who successfully raided an enemy camp yesterday.”

Emerald smiled. “I guess I must.” A pause, a little frown. “How weird is it that in two years we might actually be up there?” She nodded up toward the green cliffs on the far side of Vale that stretched up to Beacon Academy.

“Deeply weird,” said Mercury. The thought of being the guy he was without Marcus full-time seemed unreal.

“But good, right?” Emerald’s eyebrows drew up a hair in the middle.

_“So_ good,” he said. Fighting without being beaten. Food whenever he wanted it. Emerald, at his side, all the time. He half-believed it would never happen, because nothing that good ever happened to Marcus Black’s son.

Emerald was silent for a minute. She shivered again, the same little rolling of her shoulders that she’d done when his hands had been there. “I never told you why Lavender and I broke up, did I?”

Well, _that_ sure as hell came out of left field. “Can’t say you did,” said Mercury blankly.

“She wanted to cut me in on the apartment,” said Emerald, and Mercury remembered how babbling and excited she’d been when she’d told him about it. He’d figured the breakup had made Em drop out of the apartment plan, not the other way around.

“Yeah?”

“And that seemed great at first, but then I thought about it, and—and I realized I like our plan more. And I got scared that if I moved in with Lav and Daily now, I’d let our plan go, and then I realized—” she was struggling now, the words coming more slowly—“I—I don’t really want a plan that doesn’t have you in it.”

Well, shit. That was the sweetest, most heartfelt thing he’d ever heard. He’d never been brave enough to even _imagine_ Emerald saying those words to him.

He had no choice but to be an asshole about it.

He smirked. “This just in: Master Thief Emerald Sustrai loves me more than she loves hot food and running water. More at eleven!”

“Oh, shut _up!”_ Emerald shoved his shoulder and laughed. “Don’t make me sound so sappy.”

“You wanna build your life around me,” he sing-songed, triumphant.

“Psh. I’m playing the long game,” said Emerald. “I pass up the apartment now, and I get four years of _your_ cooking at Beacon.” She jabbed a finger at his chest.

“Hey.” Mercury held up his hands. “I signed up to be your bodyguard, not your chef. You’re gonna have to give me a raise.”

“Mmmm, I think you’ll reconsider that the second you experience _my_ cooking.”

“Em, you’ve never cooked in your life.”

_“Exactly,_ Mercury. And I just have a feeling that I’ll be really, _really_ bad at it.”

It was a silly, familiar dance, but he’d never get tired of it. He and Em had been following its steps for six years now. They could follow them a little longer.

* * *

It was full dark by the time Mercury let out the quick exhale that meant he was about to get up and walk home. Emerald sighed. It was the kind of day that she wanted to stretch out forever so it wouldn’t end.

They were both stretched out on their backs in the gravel now, side by side, trying to puzzle out constellations through the fog of light pollution. Or, well, Emerald was trying to. Mercury mostly just took it upon himself to heckle her.

“There!” she’d say, pointing. “That’s the scorpion.”

“You sure?” Gravel would shift beside her ear whenever Mercury tilted his head. “It just looks like a dude peeing to me.”

“Ew, what the hell?! You can see the tail right there!”

“No, but see?” Another lean of the head as he pointed, tracing the lines as he described them. “There’s the guy, and then that curly part is—”

_“Why are you like this.”_

“Some wonders, mankind can never explain.”

But now Mercury had to go. So while he sat up on his elbows and got to his feet, Emerald lay there a moment longer with her eyes closed, pretending she wasn’t sulking.

“So, Em, are you just planning to have a little campout here or what?”

Emerald opened her eyes to see Mercury looking down at her with his arms crossed, the moon giving out just enough light that she could see the smirk curving his mouth.

“I’m going,” she grumbled, and he stuck out a hand. Emerald took it and let him pull her to her feet, enjoying, too much, the second before he let go.

“Good,” he said. “I wanna test out my landing strategy with the new rounds.”

“And I’m essential to that process because…?”

“I need someone to be wildly impressed by my skills, obviously.”

Emerald grinned and shook her head. “Obviously.” She stepped to the edge of the roof. “Shall we?”

“We shall.”

Emerald leapt into the nighttime breeze, the sky rushing away from her. She spun and fired a blade of _Thief’s Respite_ back into a windowsill of the brownstone, letting it swing her along. She repeated the move again and again in a relaxing pattern, sweeping back and forth like a pendulum as she drew lower to the ground in slow, lazy arcs.

Mercury’s descent, on the other hand, was… a bit more unpredictable. The second he leapt out past the roofline, he flipped himself upside down, firing at the air as a burst of silver flashed from his greaves and launching himself down faster, his movements sharp and graceful. As he sped past Emerald, he brought himself into a roll, firing down with one foot, then the other, slowing his descent. One story from the ground, he fired both greaves at once, driving himself up into a flip and then back down.

Emerald hit the ground the second before he did. He stumbled a little on impact, and she caught his arm with both hands, her fingers tangling with his, before he could fall. The hand that had ended up braced on his shoulder fell away quickly, but the other…

Emerald didn’t want to let go. She never had. So she waited for Mercury to do it for her.

Only he didn’t. He was staring down at their joined hands with wide eyes that looked almost afraid.

Oh gods. Oh gods, she was scaring him, she needed to let go, but the second she started to loosen her fingers from his, Mercury’s hand tightened, pulling her back in, and it was _warm._ That frightened look was still there in his eyes, where the moonlight caught them. But he was holding on.

Oh.

Okay.

“So, uh, I guess I could… walk you back to the burbs?” she said. Was that normal?

Mercury snorted, his usual sharp smile returning. “Real gallant of you, Em.”

But he didn’t say no, so they started walking into the night.

How did he do this? she wondered. For all his prickliness and mean jokes, how did he make her feel, so completely, like she had something solid to hold onto? She didn’t imagine eyes staring at her from the darkened buildings. Her free hand didn’t dart to _Thief’s Respite_ every time a cat knocked over a garbage can.

Her heart drummed in her ears, and her chest felt light, but she wasn’t scared. Something about the steady warmth of his hand weaving through hers made her feel invincible.

They talked, the whole way back to the edge of the suburbs, about dumb little things—food and knick-knacks and comic books and how “wildly impressed” Emerald was with his landing strategy—swinging their hands between them as it started to feel less strange. The silence when they stopped at the edge of what must have been Mercury’s neighborhood was sudden, leaving only the clinking of the empty air Dust case clipped to Emerald’s belt.

There was a moment, then, as they stood facing each other, hands still joined, eyes meeting, when Emerald thought she might kiss him.

The moon cast a silver-blue glow on his hair and his face, the knife-edge of his nose leaving a stark shadow across his cheek. His head hung low, close to hers, his eyes roaming over her face like he was hoping to find an answer in it.

It occurred to her, suddenly, that Mercury had no idea what the fuck he was doing.

And Emerald… she kind of did know what she was doing. She’d had a moment like this with Lavender, six months ago, a moment of standing on the brink of something and deciding to make the jump. With Lavender, sure, the fall had ended in a crash, and gods, if whatever she had with Mercury ended in a crash, she was pretty sure she’d break something important. But the two of them were strong, right? It would take more than a kiss to ruin them. And she’d wanted this, on and off—whenever they fought back-to-back or he brought her some silly souvenir from a job or she heard his stupid laugh—since she was twelve, even if she’d never let herself admit it to anyone.

All she would have to do was draw his hand around to the small of her back and then thread her fingers into that soft, moon-washed hair.

She started to tug at his hand, and he suddenly startled, glancing over his shoulder at the boring square houses like there were Beowulves crouched behind them.

The moment flickered and died.

“I—I should go,” said Mercury. “My dad’s gonna be back soon.”

“Right,” said Emerald, looking away. Had she almost ruined everything?

“I don’t know, uh, how long until his next job,” he said. “But hopefully not long.” He squeezed her hand tight for a second before he let go of it, and maybe she _hadn’t_ been reading the signals wrong.

She smiled a little. “It better not be.”

His voice was a little softer than usual when he said, “Whatever you say, boss.”

So was hers, when she said, “I love you too, Merc.”

They stood there a moment longer, sheepish and smiling, before they both turned and went their separate ways. In the shadows at the end of the block, Emerald found herself turning, watching Mercury go. He was far enough away that he wasn’t much more than a speck under the streetlights when he finally turned and vanished into a square little house that must have been his own.

The yard in front of the house went gold after a moment, and Emerald imagined Mercury flicking on a light, sprawling out onto a sofa with a comic book.

She turned back toward downtown with a bounce in her step and a grin that didn’t fade all the way back to her terrace. She hummed to herself as she planted the doll-headed spider atrocity in the empty air Dust case, and she fell asleep curled up on her side, not even bothering to take her emblem off, remembering again and again the gentle feeling of Mercury’s hands smoothing it onto her back.

Emerald woke in a spray of breaking glass and a sudden heart-clench of fear. The glass tore at her skin before she had a chance to raise her aura, leaving a gash below her right eye and a series of cuts down her right arm. The world was still dark.

Four sets of boots landed on the floor of her room, trampling spare clothes and protein bars underfoot. Emerald started, trying to shove herself up onto her elbow, but found that she couldn’t. The whole left side of her body—the side that was in contact with the ground—was stuck to it somehow, her shoulder and her hip refusing to move no matter how hard she struggled.

Standing over her, a nasty smile curving across his face, was Rex Aurum. Mel and Orion flanked him, with Russel, looking a little twitchy, bringing up the rear.

_Thief’s Respite_ lay on the other side of her bookshelf, just out of reach.

“Well, if this isn’t a sight for sore eyes, I don’t know what is,” said Rex.

“Go fuck yourself,” Emerald growled, lashing out blindly with her right hand, her free hand, and succeeding only in catching the little jade cat Mercury had given her when they were twelve.

Great _choice of weapon, Em,_ a voice that sounded like Mercury’s drawled in her head.

Rex shrugged. “Maybe later. But right now, Grimm-eyes, you and me have some business to talk about.”

Meleager was frowning at her intently, his Semblance keeping her stuck to the ground.

Emerald’s hand clenched around the cat, her heart slamming against her ribs so hard it was painful. She raised her aura, felt it flicker over her cuts.

“How the hell did you find me?”

Rex nodded at Orion, who smirked and bent down to pick up the empty case for Mercury’s air Dust, briefly recoiling when he found the Atrocity perched inside it.

He pulled it out and smashed it on the floor. Emerald winced.

“Orion here,” said Rex. “Has a Semblance that lets him locate any object he touches.”

Emerald had never in her life felt so stupid. The Golds had found Daily after he’d punched Orion in the face with the stolen rings. Rex had specifically asked Orion to hand her each case of Dust. He’d never been striking a deal with her. He’d been tagging all his enemies so that he could track them down later.

Her fate had been sealed the second she’d stepped foot in that plaza, and she’d dragged her friends down with her.

“Which means that once we’re done here, we’re gonna go pick up our grav crystals. And we’re gonna butcher whatever thieving animals you gave them to.”

“No.” Emerald’s voice was suddenly small, all her bravado shriveling at the thought of Lavender and Daily’s little shack being crushed to pieces. Her eyes burned. This was her fault.

“Oh yes,” said Rex. “You made a lot of pesky little loose ends for me, Grimm-Eyes, and tonight, I’m trimming them all.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Emerald snarled, kicking his foot away with her leg that could still move.

“You took your best shot, Emmie,” said Rex, shaking his head. “But you only got one casualty.” He reached over his shoulder and drew something from the scabbard on his back. He let it fall to the ground, where it landed with a heavy _thud_ in front of Emerald’s face.

It was Cally’s hand, the fingers curled and spread wide in eternal panic, the wrist melted and twisted free of the arm.

“You killed her,” Emerald could barely get out the words around the lump in her throat, the suffocating drumbeat in her chest. “Not me.”

“Wait, what?” Russel stammered. “I thought you said you turned that thing from clay.”

Both Janus twins rolled their eyes.

“Did anyone ever tell you you’re a little slow on the uptake, Thrush?” Rex said, an edge to his voice.

Russel shut his mouth.

“So,” said Rex, turning back to Emerald. “I’ll be needing a replacement.”

A ribbon of blood from the slice on her cheek ebbed across Emerald’s nose. She reached out with her Semblance and caught Mel’s mind, showing him an image of her tearing herself free as Lavender crashed through the roof with knives drawn.

Mel snickered and shifted so he was standing behind Rex, out of Emerald’s line of sight. “She tried it.”

“Told you she would,” said Rex. “Our Grimm-Eyes doesn’t go down easy.” He snorted. “Unless you’re some ghosty outkingdom son of a bitch with metal boots. We all thought your little picnic was real cute, by the way, even if I did lose two-hundred lien betting you’d stick your tongue down his throat by the end of the night.”

At the back of her mouth, Emerald tasted bile. She lunged for _Thief’s Respite,_ but her fingers fell short by a measly four inches. The flat of Rex’s sword came down and rapped her across the knuckles.

“Uh-uh,” he said. The cheerful, boisterous mask that he’d been wearing for their last conversation had crumbled, revealing something cold and hateful. “Business. You’re every bit the lying little whore Copperfield said you were, you know that?” The point of the sword trailed up Emerald’s arm to her shoulder, sending a slithering feeling up her spine.

“I know you’re every bit the smug piece of shit I said you were,” said Emerald, swallowing back tears. “Now tell me your fucking business.”

_Get it over with._

“You robbed me,” he said. “I welcomed you with open arms, Grimm-Eyes, and you put a bullet in my face and ruined hundreds of thousands of lien worth of my property. In the past two days, half my sentries have deserted, not to mention a third of my enforcers. You’ve made people think that crossing us might not be that bad of an idea.”

A caustic, golden light burned over his hand. Emerald cringed.

“You and me, Grimm-eyes? We’re gonna set them straight.” He leaned his head back, tapped his chin. “It’s a shame, really. Tell you what, Grimm-Eyes. Since you’re so pretty, I’ll do you a favor.”

“And what would that be?” The cat felt like it was burning against Emerald’s palm.

She was never going to see Mercury again, was she?

He’d probably kill every last one of the Golds for this, but that thought didn’t do anything to stop the freezing feeling under her sternum that was making her shake all over.

Maybe she should’ve kissed him when she had the chance.

“Last words,” said Rex. “I won’t lie to you, Grimm-eyes, getting petrified is slow, and it’s ugly, and whatever sounds come out of your mouth probably aren’t the ones you wanna be remembered by. So. Right now, before we get to work, you can tell me something cool to carve on the pedestal we’ll put you on. Something nice I can show your boyfriend when he comes sniffing around for revenge.”

And _damned_ if she was going to let herself become a trophy for this sick son of a bitch. Damned if she was going to give him anything to shove in Mercury’s face.

Emerald was a survivor. She had been since the day she’d walked out of the orphanage and shut Rex Aurum out of her life.

He didn’t get to kill her. He hadn’t earned the right.

Rex was smarter than she’d thought he was. But he wasn’t quite as smart as _he_ thought he was.

Curling the cat into the palm of her hand, Emerald chose her word.

_“Duck.”_

Rex _did_ duck, because he was smart enough to recognize an attack.

But not quite smart enough to recognize that Emerald had let the jade fly at a high, sloping angle.

An angle that, with Rex out of the way, sent it rocketing straight into Mel’s eye.

Mel cried out, his hands rushing to his face, and the floor’s hold on Emerald loosened. In the split second she had, she rolled out of the way of an overhand strike of Rex’s sword, caught _Thief’s Respite_ in both hands, and fired a chain-blade blindly out the window beside her bedroll, shattering it. One of Orion’s arrows caught her in the ribs and froze to her, but her aura kept it from doing any damage.

Her blade must have stuck in something, because when she pressed the retraction trigger, the chain went taut, dragging her roughly out the window, snapping Orion’s arrow in half and sending her plummeting into the wild night air.

A beam of searing cyan light from Rex’s sword blasted into her shoulder and sheared past her eyebrow, making her cry out, and only a sudden midair twist on Emerald’s part stopped the beam from severing the chain of _Thief’s Respite._ The twist threw off her trajectory, though, and she slammed into the wall of the building across the street with enough force to rattle her teeth. She was falling, straight down, and one of Orion’s arrows thunked into the wall beside her, trailing a cord. The Golds would be after her any second.

She fired a blade again, this time aiming for the SDC building, and it caught in the mortar, swinging her out low over the ground. She looped around a corner and tumbled to the asphalt, the frozen arrow snapping off of her in the process.

Breathless, she ran, her sock feet slapping feebly against the ground. She had to get back to the roofs without them seeing her. She had to get to Lav and Daily and warn them. The world was blurry with terror and adrenaline, and there wasn’t a single clever plan in Emerald’s head, just a voice telling her to _run._

The Golds rounded the corner, and Emerald fired a blade at the nearest building, yanking herself into the air before Mel’s Semblance could take effect.

_“Shoot her the fuck down!”_ Rex bellowed.

Swinging in predictable arcs through the air as she rushed away from them, Emerald was an easy target.

She was low on aura already, but there was nothing for it.

With an effort that made her let out a strangled scream, she seized all four of the Golds’ minds at once.

“Get the _fuck_ away from her.” The illusion of Mercury came sprinting around a corner between Emerald and the Golds, his face set in a snarl of rage. Emerald herself vanished from their field of vision.

“Nice try, Grimm-Eyes,” Rex sneered. Emerald kept swinging through the air, narrowly dodging another shot from that godsdamn hard-light cannon. The beam sailed past her and on into the darkness for block after block before hitting a façade and exploding. “But we know no one’s coming to save you.”

The false Mercury sprang into the air and fired a shot down at Mel, who still looked a little unsteady after that hit to the eye. Emerald twisted an arm back and fired at the same time, the same angle, her bullet catching him in the collar and making him stumble back a step.

“Real enough for you?” The false Mercury said, landing in a crouch. The effort it took to keep him spinning kicks at the Golds, phasing through their attacks, keeping up taunts, made her vision blur at the edges and radio static take over her ears and pain pain _pain_ was all that filled her head.

Gunshots and arrows and rays of light shot wildly through the night, all of them missing.

“Hold steady!” Rex shouted, but his voice sounded uncertain.

Emerald was almost to a corner now, over a block ahead of them. She fired a final blade, letting it lodge in a building out of the Golds’ sight. In midair, she spun to catch a glimpse of her pursuers, specks in the night all firing in random directions, Rex’s sword carving burning swaths through the storefronts. Mel was the closest to firing the right way, those damn fire Dust rounds flashing red past Emerald’s feet and making her eyes ache.

“ _Ng!”_ Something slammed into Emerald’s gut and knocked her backwards into the wall she’d been aiming for. She retracted her chain and let it drag her up onto the building’s roof, out of sight of the Golds.

She pressed both hands to her head, the torturous splitting feeling inside it making her want to throw up.

“Where did she go?” Rex was shouting when she’d come back to herself a little. “Where the _fuck_ did she go?!” There was the sound of stone being shorn in half by light.

Emerald forced herself up onto her elbows, wincing, and glanced over the side of the roof.

The Golds stood on a corner across the street, Mel rubbing at his bruised eye and Rex throwing a temper tantrum that would probably cost tens of thousands of lien in property damage.

And Russel had just glanced up at the roof and seen her. His eyes widened. Emerald took up _Thief’s Respite,_ ready to roll to her feet and run.

He opened his mouth, then closed it. She could see the Dust cartridges in his knives shaking from here.

That was the face of a guy who didn’t want to get killed but also wasn’t too sure about watching a girl get tortured to death.

“Her picnic was back that way, wasn’t it?” he spoke up, pointing in the opposite direction. “You think she’d go the other way to trick us, then head for the place where she meets up with her boyfriend?”

Rex smiled and clapped him on the back. Russel winced. “Knew you weren’t a total waste of space, Thrush. Let’s move.”

Emerald waited for them to fade into the shadows before she sat up, the pain in her head still dizzying.

Lav and Daily… had to warn… had to…

She tried to get to her feet, but her legs felt cold. She stumbled and fell, the concrete biting at her knees. Her Semblance really must have taken a toll. She’d be okay in a minute. Just needed to… rest…

Under the throbbing in her skull and the mirage of adrenaline, there was a growing ache in her stomach, bugging her.

When she pressed a hand to it, her fingers came away sticky and red.

She looked down, and, in the smoggy darkness, saw a small, hungry black hole punched into her lower abdomen on the left side.

That hit that had knocked her off course… Mel’s blindly fired rounds…

The hole swallowed her vision.

_Bad…_

_Bad._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rest in peace, Emerald's Terrace: September 17, 2020 - December 3, 2020
> 
> So. Uh. Who's ready for the entire Crime Children Friend Group to go absolutely off the rails about this?
> 
> I'm hoping to have a chapter of Prank Regents go up sometime this weekend, but things are pretty busy right now, so if I'm not able to get it drafted by tomorrow, it probably won't go up until at least Sunday.
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading <3


	17. Blood's Gonna Stain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mercury deals with the aftermath of the Golds' attack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: Medical gore, graphic description of injury, and a brief appearance from Marcus that makes the "Child Abuse" tag relevant again
> 
> Also, a disclaimer: Since nearly everybody in this universe has a magical built-in healing factor, I've taken some serious artistic liberties with the field medicine, and all of it is very incorrect, so, uh, don't try this at home kids! Should your emotional support pickpocket suffer an abdominal gunshot wound, please do take her to a hospital, regardless of how many plot-relevant reasons she's able to cite for why that's a bad idea. Do not follow Mercury's example. He is not carrying the brain cell.
> 
> Happy reading!

On the night of his thirty-first half-birthday, Mercury barely slept.

Usually, when Mercury couldn’t sleep, it was because he was too scared to leave his body alone with someone who wanted to hurt it, or because his ribs seized up with pain when he tried to breathe too deep. Tonight was different.

Tonight, he liked the thoughts in his head enough that he wanted to stay awake with them, to print them on his memory so that he could call them back on nights when he was too afraid to entrust himself to sleep. That was new.

Emerald had been telling him she loved him for years now. It was hard to believe sometimes, and damn near impossible to understand why, but he’d started to settle into it, to get comfortable, like when he was small and would lean back against Fenri before falling asleep.

When Emerald had said, “I love you,” tonight, it had _not_ been comfortable. It had been _new._

And something about it had him grinning at the ceiling of his bedroom at two in the morning like an idiot.

He could have sworn, there was a second there, before he’d let go of her hand, when she’d been about to… to what? He could barely wrap his brain around it. That look on her face—that quiet little smile that turned determined halfway through—he’d seen it before.

It was the look Emerald would wear right before she kissed Lavender.

He hadn’t processed that at the time. His brain had been busy throwing out a lot of patently stupid sentence fragments, because she’d looked like she was glowing, and having her glittering red eyes fixed on his face made his throat close up, and when she’d started to pull him closer, he’d been terrified because _nothing this good ever happened it had to be a trap Marcus had to be waiting in the shadows._

Okay. Maybe he wasn’t one-hundred-percent ready for Emerald to kiss him. Hell, he probably wasn’t even thirty-percent ready. But the way Emerald had caught his hand up in hers and then kept it, that moment of almost—it meant that Em didn’t mind him being close. It meant that maybe, if he asked, if he could shut Marcus up for a while, he could hold her. Not just on special occasions. Not because they’d narrowly escaped death. Just because.

And as for the kissing stuff… they had time to figure it out, right? Emerald had said that she wanted him to stay in her life, and given that Emerald pretty much _was_ Mercury’s life at this point, he didn’t plan on changing that. The thought made his heart race like it did when he was scared, but he wasn’t scared.

He’d never have to stop making fun of Emerald for loving him.

He didn’t actually fall asleep until four a.m., and he crashed hard enough that he didn’t immediately wake up when Marcus barged in drunk at eleven and kicked him in the ribs.

His mission hadn’t gone well.

Marcus didn’t say that, of course. He just punched Mercury in the face over and over until his arm got tired, then vanished into his room to drink.

Mercury didn’t think about love for the rest of the day. He slid back into the hard, brittle shell that was Marcus Black’s son.

He was pretty sure Emerald wouldn’t love this version of him. He kind of hoped she’d never meet him.

A hard rain fell that night.

The next morning, while Mercury was hunched over in the far corner of his room, pressing a bag of frozen peas against his black eye, Marcus went storming past his empty doorway, grumbling about “another godsdamned silver-eye.”

“Four days, boy,” he growled, and the front door slammed.

Two minutes later, Mercury was directing an irresponsible amount of aura to his swollen face. The sooner he could get the fuck out of this house, the better. It only took the bruises twenty minutes to fade.

He waited another forty to be sure Marcus was really gone, and then he shoved the peas back into the freezer and phased through the door.

He spent the run downtown building his walls back up, shoving Marcus behind them, leaning on them so they’d hold, but they felt thin today.

It was hard to un-remember the taste of blood in his mouth.

Maybe he could sleep on Em’s shoulder, like he had when they were little, he thought, pounding his way up the fire escape on the building across from her place. That helped his brain reboot some of the time, helped him turn back from Marcus Black’s son to the guy Emerald loved.

And then he got up onto the roof, and all the air went out of his lungs.

Emerald’s home was shattered like one of Marcus’s whiskey bottles, the roof stoved in, half the windows shot out.

The first thought that charged through Mercury’s mind was that Marcus had finally found them out, that he’d seen them holding hands in the street the other night and hunted her down and killed her while Mercury was lying in bed with that stupid grin on his face.

His vision went grey at the edges. He squeezed his eyes shut. He had to think.

Marcus would have told him. Marcus would have gloated.

This wasn’t Marcus.

That was the only thought that made him strong enough to make the running jump into the closest thing to a home he’d ever had. He phased through what was left of the walls, and when he landed on solid feet, glass crunched under them, the sound ringing in his ears and making his heart beat too fast, and it took him a minute to fight down the urge to run, because that was the sound of Marcus losing his temper.

There was no sign of Emerald.

Her bedroll was rumpled and skewed a few feet to the right, and her bookshelf had fallen over, spilling its contents across the floor. The Legion of Atrocities was in splintered shambles. Emerald’s boots lay untouched at the foot of her bedroll, and her rations were scattered across the floor. Her ratty old dictionary and her favorite book of fairy tales lay abandoned, their pages soaked through by last night’s rain, and that scared Mercury more than the Seer Grimm ever had.

Smashed to bits on the floor near Mercury’s foot was the little jade cat he had given to her.

The faint, metallic smell of blood hung in the air, and only one thing kept Mercury from pitching to his knees in the broken glass and shaking: _Thief’s Respite_ was gone. He forced himself to ignore the possibility that the Golds—this had to be the Golds, right?—had killed her and looted her weapon.

The only possibility he could face was that Emerald had grabbed her guns and fled in a hurry and that she hadn’t had a chance to come back. Anything else was unacceptable.

Em was strong. She couldn’t be—she wasn’t allowed to be—

Mercury couldn’t make himself finish that thought.

Where would Emerald run if she was scared?

A moment later, he was sprinting toward the garden center where Lavender and Daily lived, trying to shake the sound of breaking glass from his ears.

It would be fine. It would be fine. He would get there, and they would have Emerald wrapped in a blanket, and they’d all be playing some dumb card game and laughing. It would be fine.

He could tell before he was even halfway across the parking lot that it wasn’t fine. Lav and Daily’s shed had been completely uprooted, the roof torn off and half the walls bashed in. He forced himself to go closer, to see their blankets in disarray, their pack of cards exploded across the floor. Their roof looked like it had been sheared through with a knife at a high angle. He followed the path with his eyes and spotted a dark gouge in the white paint of the side of the store.

Both Lavender and Daily’s weapons were gone, and their shoes, so they hadn’t been caught sleeping. And that telltale gouge made it look like Lavender, at least, had tried to escape, maybe using the new grav Dust Emerald had given her.

What the fuck had happened?

He started running for Tukson’s, but on the way, he looped past the old downtown bank. He and Emerald hadn’t actually set a rendezvous there in years, but if there was even a small chance…

He dashed into the alley on the bank’s right side, eyes scanning up and down the walls and then— _there!_

A gleam of dark green caught Mercury’s eye. One of the blades of _Thief’s Respite,_ dangling a few inches over the side of the roof by its chain.

There was a heavy _thud_ under his ribs.

He fired a greave against one wall of the alley, launching himself in a diagonal, then planted his feet on the opposite wall and leapt up onto the roof.

The second he laid eyes on Emerald, he decided that someone was going to die.

He hoped she hadn’t already.

She was lying on her back in a puddle of rainwater, her eyes closed, her revolvers resting on either side of her. The green locks of her hair were muddied, fanning out around her head like trampled vines, and thin cuts ran up her right arm and that side of her face. She’d stripped off her overshirt and wrapped it around her midriff as a makeshift bandage. It had gone stiff all the way through with blood, and both her hands were clenched over it, holding it in place.

Beside the right half of _Thief’s Respite_ lay her emblem, the safety pins and her nice red gloves stacked carefully on top of it, and that was the thing that broke him—knowing that Emerald, gutshot and scared and alone, had sacrificed a crucial minute before bandaging her wound to make sure it wouldn’t mess up her emblem. It was such a dumb, sentimental, _Emerald_ thing to do, and he wanted to crush someone’s skull with a boot, he wanted to scream. He wanted to scoop Emerald up in his arms, jump on the first train to Vacuo, and never look back.

He took one stumbling step forward, then another, landing on his knees beside her.

“Emerald.” He could barely make his voice work.

When her eyes flickered open, he could have cried. He wouldn’t cry.

“Merc?” Her voice was raspy and dry, and her eyes had an unfocused look that scared him.

“Yeah,” he whispered, wanting to take her hand, to turn her face toward him and smooth the mud out of her hair, to clutch her to his chest and bare his teeth at everything that tried to get near her, but he didn’t know how to do any of those things without hurting her.

She was so hurt already.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

Her eyes fixed on him, then, one corner of her mouth twitching upward in a smile of recognition.

“Knew you’d find me,” she mumbled. “Knew those bastards were too stupid to…” She trailed off.

“The Golds?” he asked.

She nodded, her face suddenly contorting like she was going to cry. Her fingers tightened over her ruined shirt.

“It hurts,” she whispered. Beads of sweat stood out on her forehead, and the coppery undertones of her skin had turned a creeping grey. Shock. Blood loss. He knew those words, and he knew what they meant, but when he tried to apply them to Emerald, they shattered into panic.

He closed his eyes. He couldn’t let himself shatter, not now. Em needed him. She needed his training.

“What made it?” he asked, nodding at whatever injury she’d pressed her hands over.

“Revolver,” she said, gritting her teeth. “Like mine. From about a block away.” Okay, distance was good. “On our birthday night.” It had had thirty-six hours to get infected. Less good. “Double-exploding fire round. If I try and bring my aura back while it’s in there, it’ll go off again.”

Bad.

“I—I think I still had a little aura left when it hit me, so maybe it didn’t go in far?” Her voice wobbled. “Is that how guns work?”

Mercury didn’t have the heart to tell her that he wasn't sure. The bullet would have had to use up some of its energy going through her aura, but whether or not that would make a big enough difference to slow it down...

Instead, he said, “We need to get you to a hospital.”

“No!” Emerald’s eyes went wild with fear, and then she winced, like moving had hurt her. “No, it’s in their territory, they’re looking for me, Rex has ties there, we can’t!” The words tumbled out of her in a rush.

“Em—” her face was pleading, and it was all he could do to hold back the knot in his throat—“I don’t know if I can fix this.”

“If—if we get the round out—” she grimaced—“my aura can fix it, right? I—I can feel it in my chest, it’s all recharged, I’m just—hng—having to hold it back. I—I could direct it all to—” she nodded down at her stomach, her teeth gritted.

“That… that might work,” he said. He had to believe it. That was all they had left.

“Okay.” A line formed between Emerald’s eyebrows. “Go back to my place. Get the tweezers and the bandages and the—the germ stuff out of the first-aid kit, and bring them here, and—” she worried a chapped lip with her teeth—“and we’ll deal with this.”

“Why can’t I just grab the whole kit?” he asked, because those were weirdly specific instructions for somebody with a bullet in her gut.

Emerald winced. “Orion—the kid with the bow—his Semblance lets him track the things he touches. He’s probably rubbed his stupid hands all over everything in my house. That’s how they found Lav and Daily on the way to the fence, and then they followed the air Dust carton to find me…”

Gods, that meant… if he’d just taken the stupid thing with him and tossed it in the garbage, Emerald wouldn’t be bleeding out on a rooftop. He felt like something inside him was burning.

“And then Lav and Daily—” her gaze turned intense—“Merc, have you seen them? Did you—”

He was already shaking his head, and her face crumpled.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Their place was totaled—” tears were running down Emerald’s face now—"but—it looked like they might not have gotten taken totally by surprise.”

“This is my fault,” she whispered.

“Em, _no,_ it—”

“I pissed them off. If I could’ve just—”

 _“No!”_ Mercury’s hands made a chopping motion through the air. He made himself take a breath. Calm. Em needed calm. When he spoke, he was talking to himself as much as Emerald. “I’m gonna get the stuff from the medkit. I’m gonna be fast. I’m going to _fix this—_ ” he pointed at her bloodied shirt—“and then I’m going to tell you all the ways this shit isn’t your fault.”

It was his. If he wasn’t always so wrapped up in dealing with Marcus’s shit, maybe he could’ve stopped this. He should have been with her. He should have protected her like he’d promised he would.

Emerald blinked back the tears. “Okay.”

He hated leaving her alone again, even for a couple of minutes, but he got himself standing up, then walking, then running, zipping across rooftops so quickly that he was back at her side in less than fifteen minutes, gauze trailing from his hands.

He’d hated leaving all her books behind, letting her ratty, horrible cow pillow lie sodden on the floor, all the silly little trinkets of the home they’d built together sinking into the damp. He’d left his little stone wolf standing guard over her shattered jade cat.

Emerald looked to be sinking, too.

“‘S cold,” she mumbled as he knelt beside her again.

He wished he’d been able to poach her bedroll, at least. It would be easier to fight the shock if he could keep her warm.

Em deserved to be warm.

“I know,” he said. “We’re gonna fix that soon.” He could hit the LargeMart—steal a wallet, grab a sleeping bag.

“But first—” he swallowed hard—“we’re gonna have to deal with that.” He pointed at the wound, and Emerald’s fingers clenched.

“Can I?” he asked, reaching for the messy knot Emerald had made of the sleeves.

She nodded, and he untied it, but her hands stayed clenched over the wound. Trying to be gentle, Mercury pried up her fingers, sliding her hands aside so that he could pull away the shirt and see the damage.

Blood had plastered the shirt to the wound, and when he peeled it away, Emerald winced, air hissing through her teeth.

“Oh gods,” Mercury whispered. He hadn’t meant to say anything, but he couldn’t stop himself.

The smell of rust and infection hit him hard the second he pulled away the shirt. The wound itself was black with dried blood, and a monstrous bruise bloomed under the skin around it like a horrible, sickly colored flower.

“Is it bad?” Emerald asked, craning her neck to get a look and wincing.

Mercury waved her back, trying not to gag. “Don’t look.”

“That’s bad, right?” She slumped back, her head thunking against the shingles.

“You’re not wrong,” he said, forcing his fingers to close around the long pair of tweezers.

How was he supposed to do this?

Marcus was already gloating in the back of his head.

_Too soft to hurt your little rat, aren’t you? Even with that lead in her guts, you’re too weak to do what you have to._

Mercury frowned. Maybe if there was an exit wound Emerald had missed, he wouldn't have to. He set the tweezers back down and set a hand on Emerald's shoulder.

"Okay," he said, "I'm gonna roll you and check real quick to make sure it didn't go all the way through, yeah?" 

Emerald nodded, brows furrowing as she braced herself. She let out a pained noise as he gently levered her up onto her side, and he felt a pinch of disappointment when he saw that the only thing staining her lower back was rainwater. It was strange to hope for a wound, but a through-and-through injury would be way easier to deal with than a bullet that needed removing. Air whistled out through her teeth as he lowered her back down. Before he gave up the search entirely, he moved down to her legs, lifting them and checking the backs of her knees, the soles of her feet, fighting back a snarl of anger when he got to the gold handprint on her knee.

"How - how the hell could it even come out there?" Emerald let out a laugh that sounded forced.

"You'd be surprised," said Mercury. Once, he'd seen Marcus shoot a guy in the throat, and the bullet had somehow pinballed against his spine and his ribs so it came out of his calf.

He really hoped Emerald was too out of it to think to ask him by he knew that.

But there were no exit points. The bullet was somewhere in her guts, and he just had to hope that it hadn't gotten too far from the entry point.

Mercury picked up the tweezers again and knelt by Emerald's stomach.

“So, Em,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. “This is gonna hurt like a motherfucker.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she grumbled, but her eyes were shining with fear. For a moment, he was nine years old again, and she was looking up at him with skinned elbows.

 _You think she’ll scream? What are you gonna do when she screams, boy?_

“Can you grab my shirt?” he asked, blinking hard.

Emerald frowned but did what he asked, her fingers knotting into the fabric by his waist.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Your job is to not let go. You're probably gonna wanna reach for my hand and stop me, and—and I'm gonna want you to stop me, but if you do, I'm just gonna end up hurting you worse.” He had another thought as he dipped the tweezers in the bottle of disinfectant.

“Your other job is to stay quiet enough that the bank people don’t freak out.”

Emerald nodded, pressing her mouth into a line.

“Okay, so the bullet,” said Mercury. “What angle are we talking?”

“It, uh, below. He was shooting up at me.” She closed her eyes. “I was trying to swing to the roof, and my Semblance had them but... lucky shot.”

“Of course you had those idiots on the ropes,” he said, trying to crack a smile. He couldn't do it.

Emerald’s knuckles pressed into his ribs. “Get it over with.”

Mercury took a deep breath. “Okay.”

He pressed one of his knees down onto Emerald’s thigh so that she wouldn’t flail too much, and Marcus had _all kinds_ of things to say about that, things that made Mercury's chest crawl, made him want to fling himself over the side of the roof so that he’d never have the power to make any of the things Marcus said come true.

But Emerald needed him here.

He shoved Marcus behind a wall, sealed it, ignored the banging that echoed in his head, the muffled shouts he could still hear.

“Okay.”

No more putting it off. He lowered his aura so it wouldn’t trigger the bullet.

Okay, a _second_ more of putting it off because this was _not_ the right protocol, he was sure, and there was enough of Emerald struggling and screaming in his nightmares, and what if he just made it worse?

Mercury had taught himself to fix small wounds, had had to pick it up over time, but Marcus had never told him anything about healing something like this. All he’d ever said about gut wounds was that only a piss-poor assassin made them, because they weren’t clean. They let the infection do the killing, and that meant that the dying took long enough for loose ends to form.

Mercury willed his hands not to shake, and then pressed the tweezers down into the wound. Emerald let out a strangled sound that made his heart clench, and her fingers convulsed.

“Okay,” he whispered. “Okay.”

“ _Fuck you fuck you fuck you,”_ Emerald whispered back, and she was still herself, and that was good.

If Em stayed herself, he could do this.

He tilted the tweezers up toward her ribs, trying to feel out a route. Trying not to think about what he was touching, pulling back at the slightest push against him. Emerald kept up a steady, whispered stream of invectives that was weirdly calming because she never swore in the nightmares, just screamed and screamed.

He angled the tweezers again (“ _Fuck you and your boots right to fucking hell”_ ) and pressed an inch further, finding the path of least resistance, the path the bullet had taken. Another inch. Emerald’s hands flared and her voice broke. Mercury was running out of space, and Marcus was getting louder at the back of his head, and if he didn’t find it soon—

_Click._

The tweezers ran up against something hard.

“Em, I found it!” he said.

“Fucking _do it!”_ There were tears streaming down her face.

Mercury let the tweezers ease open, pressed them shut around that alien little chunk of metal. He pulled back slowly, and a muffled scream came out of Emerald’s mouth. Her free leg kicked. But the bullet was moving. One inch. Two.

Mercury pulled the damn thing free and let it fall to the shingles with a mundane clink.

“It’s gone,” he told her.

Emerald’s hands loosened and fell to her sides. Blood was flowing out of the wound again, and Mercury moved quickly now, cleaning it out with the disinfectant while Emerald cursed his name and pressing a bandage down onto it. With a grunt of effort, Emerald sat up on her elbows enough that he could wrap the gauze around the bandage to hold it in place, his hands passing over her stomach and under her back.

By the time he was done, light green aura was flickering under the bandage, working along with him. Emerald’s elbows gave out, and he managed to get an arm under her shoulders before they could splash back down into the puddle.

“Thanks,” Emerald muttered. “Didn’t like being soggy.” Her face went far away for a second, and Mercury panicked, pulling her into his arms so that her back leaned against his tented leg and her head rested against his shoulder. He probably wasn’t supposed to move an injured person like that.

But Marcus was quiet, so Mercury didn’t try to let go of her. He didn’t want to let Emerald out of his sight again now that he’d found her, and his chest ached with a horrible feeling that if he didn’t keep ahold of her, she’d vanish. She looked tired and wrung out and rained through, and he didn’t want her to be anywhere but right here in his arms.

“Last night I just opened my mouth and let the rain fall in,” she was saying. “Hadn’t had anything to drink since…” She frowned. Mercury felt her shiver, rainwater soaking through his sleeve. 

“Do you wanna tell me about it?” he asked. Emerald liked talking things out. She was different from him, that way.

She nodded stiffly. And she told him, and by the time she was finished, it was all he could do to keep from shaking with rage, to keep his fingers from digging into her arm. The thought of Emerald scared and alone and pinned to the ground by people who wanted to hurt her—people who _had_ hurt her—made him want to spill blood.

“I’m gonna kill them,” and as he said it, he realized that he meant it. Marcus would probably be proud. “Em, I think I’m actually gonna kill them. All of them.”

“Russel did keep them from finding me,” Emerald said, but she didn’t sound convinced.

“Yeah.” Mercury’s lip curled. “I’ll be sure to hand him his Not a Complete Fucking Monster Award right before I kick a bullet down his throat.”

Emerald snickered. “I’ll bust out the glitter glue.”

“I like you a lot, you know that, Sustrai?” Well, _that_ was a thing he hadn’t expected to say.

Emerald smirked up at him. “You may have let it slip once or twice.”

“I’m getting sloppy,” Mercury said, relief almost making him dizzy. It was going to be okay. Em was going to be okay. They were making jokes again, and it would be okay.

He frowned. “And I have no idea how we’re gonna move you.”

“Maybe—” Emerald hesitated, wincing again, a lock of hair falling into her face—“maybe we could just stay like this for a minute? I’m… I’m a little tired.”

“Yeah,” said Mercury, gathering her a little closer. “Yeah, we can do that.”

There were a few awkward adjusting moments—Mercury noticing the strap of Emerald’s undershirt slipping down her shoulder and sliding it back into place on impulse, Emerald trying and failing to blow a soaked strand of hair out of her face until Mercury stammered, “I—I could. If you—” and she nodded, and he tucked it behind her ear, heart hammering, trying not to think about the fever that was making her skin burn like this.

Marcus could keep his mouth shut. If Mercury could dig a bullet out of his best friend without damaging her, holding her for a few minutes had to be a cakewalk, right? He could be gentle, couldn’t he? Even if he’d thought the word was an insult from the way Marcus spat it until Em’s fairytale book had taught him otherwise.

And then there was quiet. Emerald curling into Mercury’s shoulder. His fingers stroking her hair and picking the mud from it. Quiet.

“Just a minute” stretched into three minutes, then five, neither of them wanting to break the stillness.

By minute seven, Emerald was asleep. Mercury panicked for a second when her eyes slid shut, but the pulse at her neck was strong, her breathing deep and even. Good. Gods knew she needed the rest. And she’d be safe while she got it. He could make sure of that.

While Emerald slept, Mercury made plans. He made plans, and he kept sliding his fingers through her hair. How to get her off this roof? How to find Lavender and Daily? How to track down the Golds and make each and every one of them rue the day they’d ever laid hands on Emerald?

He’d managed to answer a few of those questions for himself by the time Emerald, still heavy and sleep-warm, stirred in his arms.

She blinked up at him, a nervous smile crossing her face. “So, uh. How long did ‘just a minute’ end up being?”

Mercury smirked and hoped she wasn’t close enough to his heart to feel how hard it was beating. “Try ninety. Apparently I’m an excellent fainting couch.”

Emerald rolled her eyes. “I must be healing up okay, because you’re getting annoying again.”

“About that,” he said. “I think I know what to do next.” What he wanted to do next was curl up and sleep like Emerald had, but he couldn’t do that. Keeping her safe was up to him now, and it felt like a weight on his shoulders.

“Yeah?” She was a little quieter, now, sinking back into him.

“I’m gonna hit the LargeMart, get you some new clothes so that we can move without drawing too much attention, and then I’m gonna get you to Tukson’s so we can start looking for Lav and Daily.”

Emerald nodded, frowning. “You think they’re still…?”

“If they’re not, I’m giving Lavender a stern talking-to the second I meet her in hell.” He sounded more sure than he felt. Lavender was strong for someone without training, and Daily’s tactics were good, but if a bigger force caught them by surprise… no. No, that wasn’t allowed. They had to be alive.

Emerald smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. She’s strong, like you.”

Mercury smirked, because that ammunition would last him at least a year.

Emerald scowled. “You can’t give me a free pass after I get shot?”

“Nope!” he said sunnily, because the more obnoxious he was, the more Em seemed to come back.

Emerald sat upright, wincing, so that he could move. “You should get a move on. I—I wanna find them soon.”

“Me too,” said Mercury, getting to his feet and helping her lie back down. She took up one half of _Thief’s Respite,_ clutching it with both hands.

“Hurry,” she whispered, her eyes already scanning the rooflines like she expected the Golds to come grappling over them.

“Whatever you say, boss,” he whispered back, and then he was off at a run.

* * *

While Mercury was gone, Emerald took a scrap of leftover gauze in hand and used it to pick up the bullet. She scrubbed her blood away from the Dust and the Dust away from the bullet until she was left with a little stub of metal twice as big as her thumbnail. It was almost dainty looking, though it weighed heavy in her palm.

She was going to put it on a string and wear it around her neck. She wanted Rex Aurum to see it hanging there when she killed him.

The thought helped her feel less like he could come popping over the side of the roof at any second to ram a sword through her chest.

It was ridiculous. She’d already spent a day and a half lying alone on this roof, and if Rex and his cronies had failed to track her down given that much time, there was no way they’d show up in the twenty minutes it took Mercury to run to LargeMart.

She hoped.

She was clammy and shivering and dizzy with dehydration, and if they showed up now, she wouldn’t last two minutes, let alone twenty. Having her aura raised made her feel less like she was going to hurl, but it couldn’t block out the sudden pulses of bruising pain that stabbed through her gunshot wound every few seconds, and it made her whole gut itch and scald as it burned away the infection it found there.

She’d only really stopped shivering when Mercury had held her.

Emerald was trying not to unpack that too much. People who were in shock needed warmth, right? So it was only natural that a hypothetical in-shock person, when bundled into the (strong, surprisingly nice to look at?) arms of her best friend who happened to be warm and to smell, inexplicably, like vanilla, would sink into a sense of well-being so intense that she completely zonked out. Besides, if she’d been letting him crash on her bedroll for years, it was only fair for her to crash on his actual person for an hour or so.

Right?

It was a better problem to think about than whether or not she’d gotten Daily and Lavender killed. They'd trusted her, and they'd taken care of her, and if this was what she repaid them with... The loss of her home and her dictionary and her ridiculous cow pillow was already enough to make her eyes sting, but if her stupid, reckless attack on the Golds had left two of her only friends dead…

It had been a long time since she’d thought of Mrs. Copperfield’s old fire-and-brimstone stories with anything but scorn, but with Rex Aurum ransacking his way through her life again, they weighed heavier in her mind than they usually did.

Grimm-eyed children brought destruction. When they felt powerful, they made death all around them. That was why you had to lock them in closets and tell boys to pull their hair out and keep them humble.

“Totaled.” That was the word Mercury had used when she’d asked about Daily’s house.

Her chest stung. She had to find them, but moving hurt so much, how was she going to fix this, how was she going to—

_Clang!_

Emerald rolled onto her side to face the fire escape, leveling _Thief’s Respite_ at it. The bruise on her stomach throbbed in protest.

A shaggy grey head cleared the roofline. Emerald lowered her gun.

Mercury.

He had a giant rucksack hiked up on his shoulders, not too different from the one Emerald had carried everywhere as a kid, and he hurried to her side, pulling a bottle of water out of it the second his knees touched the ground.

“Here you—” Emerald snatched the bottle out of his hands and had drunk half of it before he could finish talking. There was some kind of rule, she was pretty sure, that you weren’t supposed to drink that much after going a long time without water, but she was too sick of the dry, rasping feeling each breath left in her throat to care.

“You’re not supposed to—” Mercury was saying as she drained the bottle.

“Food.” She cut him off. “Now.”

“Right,” he said, tearing the wrapping from a couple of granola bars and dropping them into her waiting hand.

Emerald stacked them and wolfed them down, the grains scratching her throat even as they eased the ache in her stomach.

She snapped her fingers. “More water.”

“Brothers, you are _pushy_ when you’re gravely injured.” The teasing little smile on Mercury’s face was half-hearted, but Emerald was grateful for it. Sniping at Mercury was an old, familiar rhythm. It made the world feel a little less strange.

“Just gimme the water, asshole,” she grumbled.

He handed it to her and said, “I rest my case.”

After she’d had a drink, Mercury reached into the bag again. “I, uh, nabbed you some clothes, too.” He passed her a bright red hoodie and a pair of brown sweatpants.

Emerald shot him a sidelong glance. “I think there’s something psychologically twisted about the fact that you brought me an outfit that eight-year-old you would wear.”

“Lies,” Mercury said. “Eight-year-old Mercury would never be caught dead in sweatpants. He had dignity.”

“Unlike fifteen-year-old Emerald?” Emerald prodded.

“Now you’re catching on.”

Every muscle in Emerald’s stomach screamed when she sat up. Extending her arms to pull the sweater on over her head sent an dizzying twinge through her injury, but Mercury was frozen with his hands halfway between the two of them, and she knew from experience that he could get stuck that way for a while, the gears in his head clunking. He wasn’t going to be any help.

When she gritted her teeth and leaned forward to unbutton her blood-spattered shorts, though, he spun himself around and turned his back to her so quickly that she was amazed he didn’t get whiplash. It was all Emerald could do not to laugh.

Mercury treating his best friend’s infected gunshot wound? Capable of chill.

Mercury seeing slightly more of said friend’s legs than usual? _Absolutely petrified._

As she struggled to maneuver her clumsy feet through the legs of the pants, she said, “You couldn’t have gotten me some clothes that don’t make me look like someone’s disappointing grandchild?”

“What did you have in mind?” Mercury asked, and Emerald could hear the smirk in his voice. “LargeMart’s Combat Couture for the Gutshot?”

“You laugh now,” said Emerald, tying the drawstring, “but I’m filing that away as a future business idea.”

“Well, until your fashion line gets you rich,” said Mercury, “it’s Sweatpants City for you, my friend.”

“I’m filing _that_ away as a business idea too. Also, uh. I could use a hand up.”

Mercury didn’t turn around.

Emerald snickered. “I have pants on.” The pants were very ugly, but they were also very warm, and Emerald felt that she might grow to love them over time. It was nice to put a stop to the shivering.

Mercury turned back around and, after raising his eyebrows in question and seeing her nod, drew her arm around his shoulders and looped an arm around her waist. When they stood up together, Emerald’s legs wobbled, and a stabbing pain in her stomach made her wince, but Mercury held her steady.

“Think you can make it to Tukson’s like this?” he asked.

“If this is our best shot at finding Lav and Daily, then this is what we’re doing.” Emerald gritted her teeth and pulled the hood up over her head, covering her hair.

“Good point,” said Mercury.

Emerald probably _shouldn’t_ have made it to Tukson’s like that. Just the effort of standing on her own two feet made her go dizzy and light-headed, and she’d had to stop putting any weight on her left foot to keep her wound from flaring up by the time they reached the foot of the fire escape.

By the end of the first block, her grip on the back of Mercury’s jacket was white-knuckled, and the world was blurry, and a terrible buzzing invaded her ears, but she kept shuffling forward, step by step, because Lavender and Daily had to be out here somewhere, and whatever had happened to them was her responsibility.

After a while she pressed her eyes shut because the dizzying spin of the world moving past was going to make her throw up. Mercury’s arm was the only thing holding her upright anyway, and she trusted it to get her where she needed to go.

Her eyes snapped open when she heard the bell on Tukson’s door clang.

“The sign says, ‘Closed,’” said Mercury. “But it wasn’t locked.”

The shop was dim and empty, the windows turned to their darkest setting.

And then Tukson lunged out of the back room with his claws extended and his teeth bared.

He froze at the sight of Emerald and Mercury in the doorway. His claws retracted, and a smile crossed his face as he slumped against the counter.

“Kids!” He angled his head toward the back room. “They’re okay!”

That was all the warning Emerald got before Lavender and Daily came barreling out of the back room, tumbling over the counter in their haste to get to her. The resentment that had clouded Lavender’s eyes in the past month was gone, relief shining bright in its place. She was charging in for a tackle hug when Mercury set his free hand on her shoulder and brought her up short.

Even that slight motion on his part made Emerald feel like her knees were going to buckle.

But they were okay. Daily was there behind her, his head lopsided with his shorn-off ear, a small smile on his face. Emerald hadn’t ruined everything.

She still had a family. She smiled, feeling her eyes fall shut again.

“Green?” Lavender sounded scared.

Emerald’s couldn’t make herself talk. The world was spinning too fast, even with her eyes closed. Why wouldn’t it stop spinning?

“Those fuckers shot her,” Mercury said, his voice hard, and then Lavender’s hands were catching her free arm, and Daily, with a gasp of alarm, was picking up her shins, and her head fell back, and the world went dark for a while.

When Emerald came to, she was lying on her back on somebody’s bedroll with a blanket drawn up to her chin, and the air around her was filled with whispers. Her skull ached like an Ursa had been clawing at the insides of it.

“Look, it’s simple,” Mercury was saying, his voice not far from her head. “We hit enough of their patrols to draw out the leaders, and then we kill that son of a bitch and all his favorite lackies. Problem solved.”

“I think Mercury’s right, Day,” said Lavender. “Ugh, did I just say that? That felt wrong.”

“Because it’s a bad idea,” Daily whispered.

“They almost _killed—”_

“And I’m angry about it too, okay?” said Daily, his hesitant voice growing stronger. “I do not enjoy walking around with twenty-five percent of my ears gone.”

Silence.

“The Golds have money,” Daily went on. “They have rich people who care about them. If they kill us, nothing happens. Nobody important in the city would even know that we’re gone, much less care. But if _we_ kill _them_ … the rich people are going to want to know what happened to their kids, and the police _will_ come down hard. We might be able to hide from them. But we might not. And either way, they’re going to terrorize every Faunus from here to midtown.”

“If we let the Golds run the streets, though,” said Lavender. “Those racists are just gonna keep lopping parts off of every Faunus kid that crosses their path. Are we gonna let that shit stand?”

“No, but—”

“And how shitty they are to girls,” Mercury snapped. “We’re just okay with that?”

“No, but—”

“Then why the _hell_ wouldn’t we—”

_“Because if the police can fire into a nonviolent protest and kill my parents, Mercury, they can do much worse to Faunus who have committed an actual crime.”_

Emerald’s eyes flew open. Lavender had a hand on Daily’s shoulder and a look of horror on her face. Daily hadn’t even raised his voice, but his ear was switched back, his pointed face defiant. Mercury was sitting close beside Emerald, so she couldn’t see his expression, just his shoulders sagging.

“I—I didn’t know.”

Daily’s face softened. “It’s okay. I never told you.” His eyes flickered to the side. “She’s awake!”

Suddenly, every set of eyes in the cluttered room was fixed on Emerald. She squirmed a little, sending an unpleasant twinge through the wound in her side.

“Hey guys.” She smiled weakly, more a gritting of her teeth against pain than anything else, as her friends clustered around her, faces she loved, that she’d thought she’d never see again, smiling down at her—Lavender’s wild hair, the little crinkles that formed around Daily’s black eyes, Mercury’s lopsided grin. “Nice to be back.” She glanced around at the dim office space full of cardboard boxes. “Where am I back?”

“Tukson’s back office,” said Mercury. “He left to grab us some takeout a few minutes ago.”

“We’re eating him out of house and home,” said Lavender. “I think the guy did not plan on becoming a single parent of three teenagers this quickly.”

“We’re going to sneak out as soon as you’re better,” Daily added, looking down. “We don’t want him to do more than he can.”

“Also Daily and I totally found a Grimm mask in his closet yesterday, so we really don’t wanna give the police any reason to look at him too close,” said Lavender bluntly.

“White Fang? Seriously?” Emerald tried to sit up and instantly regretted it. “But he’s so… Tukson.”

“We’re choosing not to question it,” said Lavender.

Emerald nodded, her eyes shut tight to keep the world from spinning. Gift horse. Mouth. Tukson had never been anything but nice to her and Mercury, human or no.

The door of the office swung open abruptly, and Emerald’s eyes startled open again.

“Kids!” Tukson called. “I got the noodles you—” he stopped, seeing them clustered around Emerald, and smiled. “It’s good to see you awake. You gave us all a real scare.”

“Because some idiot let you walk seven blocks with a gunshot wound.” Lavender cut her eyes at Mercury.

“Knives, have you ever successfully kept Em from doing something she wanted to do?” Emerald now noticed that the floor around Mercury was littered with pens and binder clips and scraps of tape that had been fused together in strange configurations by his Semblance. He must have been fidgeting up a storm while she slept.

 _“Kids.”_ Tukson said again. “I have to lock up and get home now, but I am asking you, while I’m gone, to be nice to each other.” He looked pointedly at Mercury, then Lavender. “Nothing good ever gets done when people who should be on the same side start tearing each other up. Believe me. Now, you three are going to _take care_ of Emerald because that is the side you’re on. Okay?”

Mercury, Lavender, and Daily all nodded.

“Good,” said Tukson, setting a carton of noodles in front of each of them. “Now have something to eat before you get any crankier. I’ll be back in the morning with breakfast, and I expect you all to have slept eight hours before then.”

The office door closed and locked.

“Well _that’s_ not happening.” Lavender snorted.

“He’s trying his best,” said Daily serenely.

They were silent for a while, eating. After two days of nothing but rainwater, the noodles, oily and overcooked as they were, seemed transcendent.

After she’d eaten, Emerald’s head felt clearer than it had since before the moment Rex Aurum’s boots had shattered her ceiling. It was starting to ask questions again.

She looked up at Lav and Daily. “How did you two get away?”

“We’d been sleeping in shifts ever since…” Daily’s hand strayed toward his mangled right ear.

“Add Day’s kickass night vision to that,” said Lavender, “and we saw them coming way before they saw us getting ready to run. Grav crystals worked like a charm, by the way.” She tapped her knives, a purple glow inside the handles. “I just threw one of the girls through the roof so she stuck in the side of the depot, and then the other pulled us after her. Then I had enough power left over to send those assholes cliff-diving. Shoesticker must've been off his game.”

Emerald fought back the urge to snicker at the fact that Lavender was even worse at naming her weapons than Mercury was and said, "Because I hit him in the eye with a rock."

 _"Nice,"_ said Lavender, but then a frown took over her face. “If you’d had someone watching your back, Green, this couldn’t have happened.”

At that, Mercury’s shoulders rose an inch, his hands clenching. “Look, I know I screwed up, okay? You don’t have to rub it in.”

Lavender’s jaw went slack. Daily looked between the two of them, his good ear swiveling nervously. Emerald frowned in confusion.

“Mercury?” she said. “Do you think this is _your_ fault?”

“Well, yeah,” he said, like it was obvious. “I didn’t catch them spying on us, and I’m—I’m never around enough.” His hand darted toward Emerald’s where it rested on the carpet, then faltered. “If I hadn’t been so worried about—I mean if I hadn’t been helping my dad, I could’ve stopped them. I should have been there.”

“Oh, bullshit!” Lavender burst out. “You’re not the asshole who made Daily’s house forbidden territory for her! If this is anyone’s fault, it’s mine.”

“Gods, Lav, it’s not like you formally banished her or some shit, you were just awkward. I was with her, and I _left her alone.”_

“She wouldn’t have _been_ alone if I’d just gotten over myself and invited her back to card game night!”

Emerald looked across at Daily, who seemed to be her only friend who hadn’t completely lost his mind. He was already watching her, a hand clasped over his mouth, his shoulders trembling with barely restrained mirth. He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head, first toward Mercury, then toward Lavender.

With a slow dawning of hilarity and horror, Emerald followed his gaze from Lavender’s stubborn, locked-up jaw to Mercury’s.

 _Oh my gods. I have a type. And oh my_ gods, _that type is_ stupid.

“Uh. You guys do know that I picked a fight with them on purpose, right?” Emerald asked. “This is _my_ idiocy, and I’m not gonna let you guys steal it.”

“Shush.” Lavender waved her off. “Wolfboy and I need to settle this.”

Tears were forming in Daily’s eyes, and he doubled over in whooping, hysterical laughter. “I have… the dumbest friends… I can’t believe… you both think…”

At the same time, Lavender and Mercury frowned and said, “What do you mean, it’s not my fault?” and after all the stress and horror of the past two days, something inside of Emerald snapped, and she joined Daily in helpless laughter.

“Ow!” She clutched at her bandaged side but couldn’t stop laughing. “Ow, fuck!”

Mercury and Lavender’s jaw-clench-and-staring contest broke suddenly, Lavender letting out a giggle and rushing to cover it with a hand, Mercury snickering uncontrollably as he rested a hand on Emerald’s shoulder to steady her.

“Ow!” Another pang ran through Emerald's stomach as she struggled to rein in her laughter.

“Now, _that’s_ definitely our fault,” Mercury told Lavender, smiling a little as he set a hand on Emerald’s shoulder, steadying her.

Lavender cracked a smile too, but there was something sad about it. She turned toward Emerald. “I just—when Day and I found your place… the last thing I did was shove you away, and I didn’t—want to leave things…” she shook her head. “What I mean is, you’re our friend, Green, and I know—” her eyes landed on Mercury’s outstretched hand for a second—“things have been weird lately, but… as your friend, I’m not letting you out of my damn sight until we’ve put these bastards down once and for all.”

Emerald returned the smile, a melancholy feeling in her chest. When she said, “Thank you, Lav. Really,” it felt like an end of something.

“Hear, hear,” said Daily, raising an empty noodle carton in a toast. “And once we put an end to their reign of terror, I’ll finally get my hatrack.”

“Not to be a buzzkill,” Mercury asked, “but how are we gonna make ‘once and for all’ happen?”

“Buzzkill,” Lavender muttered.

Daily wrapped his arms around his knees. “If the police cared about protecting people more than they did about protecting rich people’s money, we could just report a crime.”

“Nice joke, Day,” said Lavender, but something started turning in Emerald’s head.

Rex was a rich boy dipping his toes into the criminal underworld for fun. Emerald had been living there for nearly a decade.

He might be a more dangerous leader than she was, but he’d never be a better crook. He’d never had to learn how to cover his tracks.

In her mind, pieces started to slide together.

“Half Rex’s sentries deserted when I blew up their Dust stores,” Emerald said. “A third of his enforcers, too. He told me that. I think that made him madder than anything else.” She shivered at the memory of his sword trailing up her arm. “He really, _really_ wants people to think he’s cool.”

“So?” said Lavender.

“So, he’ll do stupid shit if we can just bait him right. If we can make him afraid that he’ll look weak.”

_Protecting rich people’s money…_

There had to be a bigger fish than Rex, one that couldn’t be bought by his father. Wait… hold on… that could… But then where would they get the…?

_This sword’s worth more than the whole orphanage, Grimm-eyes._

There!

Emerald squared her shoulders. “I have a plan.”

“That quickly?” Mercury looked… kind of starstruck. She was definitely going to commit that expression to memory.

“More of a notion,” she said sheepishly. “But if it works…” She grinned. “Oh, it’s gonna be _good.”_

Lavender stuck a hand out into the center of the square that the four of them made. “Works for me, Green.”

Emerald set her hand over Lavender’s, and it didn’t feel weird like she’d worried it would. It felt like a pact. “Thank you,” she said again.

“I add my hand to this pile of hands taking it on faith that we’re going to workshop this plan before we implement it,” Daily announced.

Mercury shrugged. “Gods know I’ve got nothing better to do.” His hand slapped down on top of the stack, making Daily wince.

Emerald smiled, and under the gnawing ache of her wounded side, she felt something in her chest sharpen like steel.

“Let’s get to work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the Emerald Protection Squad has mobilized!
> 
> Tune in next week to watch Emerald earn the terrifyingly-skilled-tactician-and-diplomat aspect of her secondary Cleopatra allusion!
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading, and I'm excited to talk with you guys in the comments :D


	18. Fulfill My Design

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the first stages of Emerald's plan unfold.

_Dear Tukson,_

_We’re really sorry to give you a scare like this. We know you thought we’d be staying until we’d ~~lifted enough wallets~~ sold enough lemonade to afford an apartment, but we all got together and decided that that wouldn’t be fair to you. We know you keep saying that we can stay here as long as we like, but we’ve seen the kind of business your store does. We’re 60% of your customers._

_We don’t want you to do more than you can afford to do._

_We had also planned to say good-bye in person, but Daily has made it known that he will cry if he has to do that, and we suspect that you are a sympathy-crier, and then we would never leave._

_We don’t want you to worry about us. We know you will worry about us because that’s the way you are, but we want you to know that we’re being careful. Emerald has a plan that should keep us a step ahead of the Golds the whole time, but we’re going to need to be moving around a lot and keeping them from getting too much of a focus on any one place, so we can’t stay here any longer. Besides, we’re guessing you can’t afford much police attention. We’re not going to let the Golds hurt any more people. We’re done hiding. It’s time to take the fight to them._

_We figure you know what that’s like._

_Thank you so much, for everything. If we start listing all the individual things that we need to thank you for, Daily will not be the only one crying, so we won’t. But you know how much you’ve done for us just as well as we do, so, lucky us, we don’t have to. We can just say thank you. For all of it. Always._

_Daily’s going to try to keep us all on a balanced sleep schedule per your request._

_Love,_

_Daily, Emerald, Lavender, and Mercury (whose_ _inclusion in this runaway note is dubious given_ _that he never actually lived with you, but_ _he seemed like he really wanted to be included)_

_P.S. You really need to find a better hiding place for your Grimm mask. It’s just staring straight at literally anyone who noses through the closet in your workroom._

_P.P.S. We’re sorry for nosing through the closet in your workroom. In our defense, we were bored._

* * *

“You ready for this?” Mercury asked.

In the alley below him and Emerald, a group of half a dozen boys with gold bands tied around their sleeves stood, laughing and passing around a cigarette and hacking whenever they tried to inhale. Mercury took a step away from the edge of the roof so that he couldn’t be spotted from the ground.

“I’m ready.” For someone who had only been up and walking around unassisted for a couple of weeks, Emerald looked unbelievably tough.

She’d officially returned from her nearly two-month-long stay in Sweatpants City four days ago, and Mercury had run down to an outlet mall with her to watch her back while she picked up some new clothes.

She looked… kind of sharper now, or more grown-up, with her hair tied back in a ponytail and that white leather jacket slung on over her tank top. It was spattered with black ink from where she’d torn off the security tag and then marched right out of the store looking like she’d dare the Brothers themselves to try and stop her. Red safety pins bristled from the emblem on her back. The cut that the shattered glass of her terrace had made across her right cheek had turned into a sharp-edged scar, and the bullet he’d dug out of her with shaking hands hung by a cord around her throat.

At least he could make an unending supply of cowboy jokes about the chaps she’d stolen to wear over her capris. Speaking of, he hadn’t cracked one in a few hours…

“So, you want me to rustle you up some dawgies?” he said, drawling on the vowels.

Emerald shot him a look that was clearly intended to do physical harm, and he grinned. This was a lot better than letting his mind spin on whether or not she was getting back into the fight too soon, or whether her wound was as healed as she said it was, or whether he’d be able to protect her if her convoluted plan went south.

“I still think you should’ve sprung for the hat,” he said. “I could redo your emblem to be a little sheriff’s star…”

Emerald’s scowl deepened. And every second he yammered was a second she spent off the Golds’ radar.

“Look, you should have known when you stole those things that you were opening a door you wouldn’t have the power to close. This will never end. It’s cowboy jokes all the way down, my—”

Emerald set a hand on his shoulder. Her scowl was gone.

“Merc,” she said. “I promise I’ve got this.”

He tensed up for a second, then shook his head. “I know that. I just—after last time, I don’t—”

_Want to find you looking like a corpse again._

“I have backup this time,” she said, giving his shoulder a squeeze before letting it go. “And besides, this?” She nodded toward the alley. “It’s just a little wake-up call. Nothing to worry about.”

Emerald sounded like she was trying to convince herself just as much as she was him.

“Okay,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender and hoping his smile was reassuring. “You’ve got this.”

Emerald nodded. “Let’s get ‘em.”

Mercury struck first, flipping backwards off of the roof and angling for the center of the circle of low-ranking Golds. He recognized a couple of them from the hit-and-run attacks he’d been carrying out on the Golds’ Dust supply runs for the past month, and okay, he was a little impressed. Most people would probably back out of a criminal conspiracy if it meant taking _Talaria_ to the face more than once.

(Had Emerald, while wounded, emotionally blackmailed him into using her book-nerd name for his greaves? Maybe, but that was neither here nor there.)

The Golds didn’t even have time to flinch back before Mercury landed on his hands in their midst, wheeling his legs in a series of kicks and shin-sweeps that sent them all sprawling before he sprang up into a crouch.

One of the guys he’d fought before, whom Mercury hereby decided to dub “Punching Bag Number One” sat up with a groan. “Brothers, guy, we’re not the ones who killed your girlfriend.”

_Ha._

Em’s hunch had been right. Rex was too proud to tell his minions she’d gotten away. Lavender and Daily keeping Emerald totally hidden for the seven weeks while Mercury ran around town beating up Golds left and right like a superhero whose wife had gotten fridged probably hadn’t hurt.

And now whatever Rex had bragged to his followers was about to make him look all kinds of stupid.

Mercury cocked his head to the side. “I have a girlfriend? _Nice!”_

Punching Bags One and Two glanced at each other, disconcerted.

“The green-haired one?” Punching Bag Number One prompted.

Number Two decided to pitch in, too. “Who blew up our base?”

“Ohhhh,” Mercury snapped his fingers and pointed, “You mean my _best_ friend!” He grinned. “I know you didn’t kill her.”

The confused stares intensified.

“Any of you guys gonna ask why I know that? With confidence that ironclad?”

Silence.

Mercury sighed. “I’m really gonna have to break this down for you, aren’t I?” He glanced up at the roofline. “Boss? You wanna straighten this out?”

Mercury backed up a couple steps so that he’d be able to keep all the Golds in sight, and then Emerald came soaring over the side of the roof, curling into a graceful flip in midair and sticking a three-point landing.

He’d spent three days helping Emerald practice the flip, spotting her as she taught her body how to move again and struggled with the stiffness in her side, catching her in his arms when she couldn’t get her feet beneath her in time. Mercury had pointed out that a landing like that would probably be hard on the knees.

To that, Emerald had said, “I’ll look strong if I get it right, then.”

Mercury hadn’t been able to argue with that. One of the only lessons Marcus had taught him that Mercury actually thought might have some value to it was that people who seemed strong became strong and that people who let themselves look weak got weak too.

Emerald snapped her head up, red eyes flashing under her bangs, and the Golds all cringed away from her. She looked strong.

As she slid to her feet, Mercury kept his eyes trained on the Golds, searching their faces for any sign that they might try something and plotting out countermoves. If the Punching Bags struck at the same time, he could spin a pair of kicks their way and knock them back. If the kid on the right with the switchblade moved, Mercury could break that sorry excuse for a stance with a greave and then twist the knife out of his hand.

Even if Emerald _was_ up for a fight, Mercury wasn’t going to let any of these shitweasels within a yard of her.

“You’re dead!” Switchblade Kid exclaimed, which, _wow,_ 0/10 on the observational skills there.

“That’s news to me,” said Emerald, resting a hand almost casually on _Thief’s Respite_. “How’d I die?”

Switchblade swallowed and shrank back against the wall, his face going red with what Mercury guessed was embarrassment at having had the dumbest reaction to Emerald being alive.

“No, seriously,” Emerald said. She pointed at a scrawny blond kid toward the back of the group. “You. I know you. You’re a sentry, right?”

He nodded, wide-eyed.

Emerald smiled. “Nice to see you again. So. You mind telling me what tall tale Rex fed you because he was too scared to admit I got away?”

“Rex doesn’t get scared,” Switchblade said stoutly. His hand was shaking, though.

“Not talking to you, buddy,” said Emerald. “Sentry-friend. What’s your name?”

“Xan?” he said, like it was a question.

“Okay, Xan,” said Emerald. “What did Rex tell you?”

“He—” Xan glanced away nervously. Punching Bags One and Two hunched against the wall.

“Spit it out, kid,” said Mercury, having a feeling that he wouldn’t like whatever “it” was.

“He said that—that he went after you at night on his own. That he fought you and he took you down and you—you begged him to let you live and said you’d do anything. And, uh—” Xan looked very much like he wished he could sink into the ground and die. Mercury was starting to feel like granting that wish, for every Gold in the alley.

“He talked some about the anythings that he might have liked you to do. And he implied that you offered to do them.”

Mercury’s hands curled into fists. He could imagine the way Emerald was tightening her fingers around _Thief’s Respite_ so that nobody would see them shake, but he didn’t dare look away from the Golds, even if they were all cowering now.

When they got away from here, when they didn’t have to be quite as strong, Mercury decided, he’d let Emerald rage-scream into his shoulder as long as she needed to.

“But then he turned down your offer, chopped your head off, and threw you in the bay.”

“Classy,” said Emerald, her voice almost a growl.

Xan held up his hands, shoulders hunching. “I thought it was pretty fucked up.”

The other guys all nodded hastily, like that would make Mercury want to kick their heads in less.

_Stick to the mission._

“And he’s going to pay for it,” said Emerald, clinging to her script against all odds. “It’s up to all of you to decide what side you want to be on when that happens. You already knew Rex Aurum was an egotistical douchecanoe on a power trip when you joined up with him, and honestly, fuck you for joining up knowing that. But I’m here right now to show you that he’s not as strong as he wants you to think he is. He and Russel and the Janus twins attacked me, _all together,_ in my _sleep._ And I got away clean.”

Mercury and Emerald had decided, in confidence, to omit the whole getting-shot-in-the-guts part. If Rex Aurum was allowed a couple PR fibs, so were they.

“Now, why would big, strong Rex feel the need to lie to you about that unless he was absolutely shit-scared of the girl he couldn’t kill?” Emerald went on.

“Switchblade,” said Mercury. “Close your mouth, wouldja? You’re gonna catch flies.”

The kid’s jaw clacked shut.

“W-what do you want?” Punching Bag Number One finally raised a relevant question.

“I’m _so_ glad you asked,” said Emerald. “You’re gonna tell all your buddies who you saw today. And then you’re gonna go all the way up your food chain to Rex, and you’re going to tell him…” she paused for a moment, and when Mercury hazarded a glance at her, she was smirking. “…that Grimm-Eyes is ready to live up to Copperfield’s fireside story hour.”

“That’s—that’s all?” Punching Bag Number Two piped up.

“Not quite,” said Emerald, casting a glance at Mercury.

He crossed his arms. “Gentlemen, we have a proposition for you.”

* * *

Emerald jolted awake long before the sun rose. Someone a block away had slammed a car door too loudly, and that was all it took for her to startle into consciousness, her hands racing to shield her wounded side.

Ever since her home had come raining down around her in pieces, Emerald had a hard time falling asleep and an even harder time staying that way. Every sound was a threat, now.

She rolled onto her back and stared up through the roof of the six-person tent that she, Lavender, and Daily were shifting around the rooftops with all their supplies, never staying in one place for too long. It was a clear, dry night, so they’d left the rain shade off, and the glowing fragments of the moon were still high enough that they cast a little light through the mosquito netting.

With her eyes, she tried to trace out the same constellations she’d looked for on that last calm evening she’d shared with Mercury, even the gross, stupid “Man Peeing” formation that he’d insisted he saw. She waited for her heart to stop galloping, for the buzz of adrenaline to fade from her veins.

Daily was curled into a ball beside her, breathing softly, his ear twitching in his sleep. Emerald allowed herself a small, tired smile. At least someone was getting some rest.

But it was becoming increasingly clear that she wouldn’t be. That anxious pounding in her chest wasn’t going anywhere.

Emerald sat up closely, careful not to make any noise that might disturb Daily, and crawled over to the open door of the tent. Lavender sat in front of it, her arms looped around her knees, her eyes scanning the surrounding rooftops for signs of danger.

Emerald tapped her shoulder. “I can take over.”

Lavender frowned at her. “Green, you’ve taken over for me and Day the past two nights.”

“I know,” Emerald’s shoulders hunched in. “But I can’t—look, you _can_ sleep. So, sleep, okay?”

That look of concern only got stronger. “You’ve got a lot on your plate right now, Green. I dunno if it’s a good idea for us to put you in a position where you could start losing your marbles to sleep deprivation.”

“I know, okay!” Emerald hissed, struggling to stay quiet enough that she wouldn’t wake Daily. “But—but if I’m going to lose them anyway, we might as well get some use out of it.”

Lavender turned and rested a hand on Emerald’s shoulder. “Okay. Just—be careful with yourself, yeah?”  
  
“Sure,” Emerald said, shrugging off Lavender’s hand and taking her place outside the tent.

Lavender frowned one last time before vanishing into the tent.

Emerald let out a sigh and looped her arms over her knees, settling in for her watch. The sky in front of her was just starting to take on the faint tinge of indigo that led slowly into dawn. As the minutes slipped by into hours and new colors painted themselves softly onto the horizon, the rush of adrenaline receded bit by bit, until, when the sun emerged in a riot of pink, she wanted nothing more than to curl up on her bedroll and let sleep catch up with her.

She shook her head as it started to sink down onto her chest. That wouldn’t do. They had practice runs today. Rex had outthought her before, and she wasn’t going to let it happen again. Her plan had to run perfectly down to the second.

The bastard was never, ever, going to catch her sleeping again.

So, she’d steal some coffee. Tea wasn’t strong enough these days.

And then Mercury came clambering over the side of the roof and drove those thoughts away. Sleep let go of her limbs as she sprang to her feet, and the grin spreading across her face was as real as the sun breaking over the skyscrapers. She rushed toward him, and he handed her a lidded cardboard cup.

“Coffee?” He looked pretty tired himself, his hair sticking up every which way. He’d been off on a mission with his dad for a couple of days, and he always came back from those looking sort of frazzled.

“I love you,” she said and grabbed it out of his hand. She drank it too quickly, the bitterness making her face twist up. She’d always prefer tea.

“I still don’t understand how you drink that stuff,” he said, wrinkling his nose. His face had gone a little pink.

“Sheer desperation,” she said, and before she could follow it up with a crack about him being too much of a baby to graduate from hot chocolate, all her worries fell back onto her shoulders like a lead weight. She frowned and downed the last of the cup. “Now let’s go wake the zombies. We’ve got work to do.”

An hour into their work, Emerald was firing a blade of _Thief’s Respite_ into the air after Lavender and Mercury, who were tumbling upwards at a diagonal in the grip of Lavender’s Semblance.

Though roof they were practicing on was sheltered, seven stories up but with higher buildings surrounding it and screening it from view, Daily kept watch, his eyes scanning the skyline.

Lavender spun out of the way of the blade, Mercury keeping ahold of her forearm, and caught the chain. Her Semblance yanked Emerald off her feet and into the air after them. Mercury gave Lavender’s arm a push, and she spun, her hair flying out around her and obscuring her horns as the chain wrapped around her waist again and again, reeling Emerald closer to them. Emerald’s side twinged, worse than it had the first couple times they’d practiced the move, but she fought it down.

Lavender and Mercury would have one shot at getting this right when the time came, and they needed a grappler to practice on.

Lavender grabbed Emerald’s wrist as soon as she was level with them, and then Mercury caught both of their arms. Lavender’s Semblance let go of them, and then they were hurtling down toward the little utility shed on the roof that they’d made their target zone.

Just before they could slam into the shed’s roof, Mercury blinked hard, and they phased straight through and landed in a heap on the dim floor of the shed. Emerald winced as Lavender’s elbow landed on her stomach.

“Success?” Lavender asked.

“Success!” said Emerald before gritting her teeth as a tremor of pain slid up through her side. “And ow.”

Lavender shifted her elbow and sat up. “Sorry.”

“‘S okay,” Emerald said, even though the bruising sensation she felt as she pushed herself upright made her want to flop onto her back and lie still for a long time.

“C’mon,” said Mercury, catching their arms again.

He phased them back through the walls of the shed, his Semblance making a weird, weightless feeling in Emerald’s stomach.

“We should go again,” Emerald said, bracing a hand over her side. “You guys’ll probably need a quicker recovery time if we’re gonna—”

Mercury and Lavender glanced at each other. “Your turn,” said Lavender, throwing up her hands.

“Em,” Mercury said, taking a step toward her while Lavender backed away, “I think it might be a good idea for us to take a break.”

Emerald frowned, her hand tensing, because he was _right,_ but—

She was so, so sick of feeling fragile. Now that Rex knew she was alive again, every second she wasn’t using to bring him down felt like admitting that she woke up, gasping, in a cold sweat most nights, expecting to see gold eyes leering down at her.

She wished she could actually make herself as invincible as she needed to look.

Emerald glanced down at the hand covering her wound. “I shouldn’t be slowing us down.”

She didn’t know how to explain that every time she felt a twinge in her side, it felt like her body was taunting her. _Hey, Emerald. Remember that time you were completely helpless to keep a bullet from tearing through us? Because I do. You ever think about what would have happened if Rex had found you before Mercury did? About how if you don’t get your shit together soon, it’ll happen again?_

She did think about it. Too much.

“I think we’ve got the move as good as we can get it for now,” said Mercury, and Emerald barely didn’t roll her eyes because Mercury not finding flaws in combat practice was a sure sign of the end times. “Lavender and I can work on some melee stuff, and you and Daily can… I dunno, whatever nerds do.”

“You do understand that you and Lavender are the only members of this friend group who are addicted to comic books, right?” Emerald said, a little nettled that Mercury had dodged her argument. “And that I _need_ to get better, fast.”

“Look, Em—” his eyebrows drew up in the middle—“we’re doing this so you can be safe, so it’s kind of counterproductive if we let you re-injure yourself sparring, yeah?”

“I know,” she said. “I just… I hate it.”

On the worst nights, when she woke up scared and sweaty and threatening to punch a hole in the tent, Lavender and Daily did their best to help calm her down. Lavender would sit up silently and bring water from their packs while Daily sat close beside Emerald and took her hands and told her where she was, over and over again, in a quiet voice, and she would love them both forever for that.

But in those moments when the world seemed to close around her and shatter into static, the one she really wanted was Mercury.

But he was never there. He couldn’t be.

He started to say something else, but Emerald shook her head.

“It’s okay,” she said quietly. “I’ll go nerd. You’re right.”

He frowned for a second, then nodded and walked off across the rooftop to join Lavender.

Emerald plopped down next to Daily on the edge of the roof, letting her legs hang over the side. His eyes were flicking from the rooftops around him to the big book on electronics that lay open in his lap and back again.

He barely looked up when she sat down, frowning over a diagram.

She sat in silence for a moment, watching the early May sun slide through the clouds, and then asked, “How’s the ear?”

Daily looked up in surprise.

“If, uh, if it’s okay to ask.”

“I assume you mean the lack of ear?” Daily asked, his fingers darting toward the empty space on the side of his head.

“Yeah,” said Emerald. “How is it?”

Daily’s remaining ear swiveled thoughtfully. “I… still feel it sometimes. When I go to rotate them both, it feels like it’s all there and moving. It aches a little.” He smiled wanly. “I have a ghost ear. It’s very exciting. What about you?” He nodded at her side.

“It just hurts,” she said. “I mean, you’ve heard me bitching about it. I just feel like… if it’d stop, I wouldn’t feel scared anymore. And I know that’s dumb and not how anything works, but—I feel like if I felt the way I did before, I’d… feel the way I did before.”

Daily closed his book and set his elbows on his knees. For a moment, he was silent.

“They took parts,” he said. “Of both of us. And they’re not parts that we can just steal back.”

Emerald’s fingers strayed to the bullet hanging around her throat.

“So, I guess now—” he swiveled his remaining ear, the stump of the ruined one moving in sympathy—“we figure out what to do with the ghosts.”

“I guess we do,” said Emerald, thinking of her little jade cat, crushed under Rex’s boot.

There was a clattering sound behind them and Lavender’s harsh laugh.

“At least those two are getting along,” said Emerald, nodding at Lav and Mercury only to wince in sympathy when he kicked her in the chin and she jabbed a knife into the underside of his knee before he could retreat.

“Your definition of ‘getting along’ frightens me,” said Daily.

Emerald cracked a smile. “Any luck with the cameras?” If the next phase of their plan was going to go into motion, they needed a way to take out the security cams that watched the entrance of Vale’s Print Records Building.

“I matched the ones outside the Records Building to one of the models in the book, and it’s pretty high-tech. I mean, we could always smash them the night before, but that’s pretty unsubtle, and if somebody notices…”

Emerald shook her head. “What have we got that’s subtle?”

“Well, they’ve got a bunch of fragile little electric relays inside them. If we had some way of disrupting those…”

There were times when operating with a first-grade level of formal education seriously bugged Emerald, and this was one of them.

“So, how could we disrupt them? Like, with science?”

_With science, excellent plan, Sustrai._

Daily didn’t laugh at her, though. He just frowned, tilting his head. “It’s a little tricky to explain, but electricity kind of jumps through the spaces between molecules. If we could block those spaces, they’d short out.”

Emerald frowned, an idea starting to take hold. “Something that can slip through the spaces, huh?”

She looked over her shoulder at Mercury as he phased through one of Lavender’s attacks, tapped her on the shoulder, and punched her in the jaw when she turned.

Daily smiled. “Or someone.”

Mercury looked up, glancing between Emerald and Daily. “Uh-oh. You’re both looking at me.”

"Indeed we are," said Daily

“This is gonna be bad, isn’t it?”

Emerald grinned.

* * *

_Yeah, I was right,_ Mercury thought, dangling upside down by the chain of _Thief’s Respite_ at three in the morning with the brick façade of the Print Records Building two inches from his nose.

“Remind me why I agreed to this?” he called out.

“Because despite your snide and disaffected exterior, you care deeply about your few close friends and will go to inordinate lengths to protect them from harm.”

“Thanks for that, Daily,” Mercury grumbled. “Em? I’m gonna need to be a few feet lower.”

“Okay!”

He abruptly dropped nearly six feet and let out an undignified squawk. _“Emerald!”_

“Sorry! The extension mechanism’s still a little finicky.”

Mercury rolled his eyes even though, from her perch on the fifth-story balcony, Emerald wouldn’t be able to see it.

“’It’s all good, Mercury,’” he muttered under his breath. “’I totally fixed the extension function months ago, Mercury, it’s perfectly safe.’”

He was low enough down now that the first of the two security cameras that overlooked the building’s entrance was within reach.

They’d tested this trick in the LargeMart electronics aisle a couple of days before by the very scientific method of Mercury looking both ways to make sure nobody was watching and then sticking his hand into one of the display TVs, causing it to instantly flicker and die.

The dicey part, right now, would be making his hand phase while the rest of him stayed solid. Going fully intangible right now would mean falling straight through the chain around his ankle that was the only thing holding him aloft, and Mercury did not find that concept appealing.

_Less energy, more concentration,_ he told himself, trying to focus over all the blood rushing to his head. He pressed his fingertips to the metal casing on top of the camera, willed it to give way for him, and his hand slid through. He felt the sort of hum running up his arm that meant he’d phased into something electric, that he and the lightning were jostling for space and it was losing. With a faint, fizzling sound, the electric feeling died.

“One down!” he called up to Emerald.

“Okay! I’ll swing you over to the next!”

“Wait, no! Don’t—”

And then with a lurching sensation, he was swinging back and forth through the air more quickly than he would have liked, laughing queasily as the camera on the opposite side of the double doors drew closer in the wheeling plane of his vision. On the fourth swing out, he stretched out a hand, focusing as well as he could, and swept it through the camera.

_Fizzle._

Mercury smiled. “Got it! Reel me in!”

He regretted asking more or less instantly when the chain retracted with blistering speed, sending him shooting upward. Emerald let out a squeal of alarm as the chain yanked his booted foot into the barrel of _Thief’s Respite_ with the force of a battering ram, sending it flying out of her hand and dragging him sideways. Mercury caught a glimpse of her eyes flashing in the darkness before he slammed into her and they landed in a heap on the concrete with him sprawled across her stomach. Daily narrowly sprang out of their way.

“Worst fishing trip ever,” Emerald groaned.

“Hey,” Mercury said, rolling onto his side and propping his chin on his hand so that he could make eye contact with her while being deeply obnoxious. “I’ll have you know that I am a catch.”

Emerald fixed him with an indignant, scathing look that lasted for all of two seconds before her nose crinkled up and she let out a loud, embarrassing snort-laugh that he could feel through her stomach and that had no right to make him feel like everything in the world was okay.

“Wait!” She sat up abruptly and shoved him off of her, prodding at her stomach, and it all came rushing back—the Golds, the gunshot, her blood on his hands. But Emerald was grinning.

“It didn’t hurt,” she whispered. Her eyes shining, she looked up at Daily and exclaimed, “It didn’t hurt!”

Emerald let out a whoop of triumph that echoed for several blocks.

From her lookout station two roofs over, Lavender boomed, “ _GREEN, WHAT PART OF ‘STEALTH MISSION’ DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND?”_ Her voice resounded through the empty streets.

Mercury cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled back, “ _HEY KNIVES, DO YOU TAKE CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM?”_

“I find myself questioning both of your methods,” Daily said mildly as Lavender fired back, “ _DOES YOUR_ FACE _TAKE CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM?”_

As Mercury opened his mouth to shout, _“IT DOESN’T NEED TO,”_ Emerald clamped a hand over it, which was probably a good idea. He didn’t feel even the smallest hint of panic when she did it, and that was a nice surprise. So instead of attempting to bite one of her fingers off, like he would’ve when he was eight, he spent a second contemplating whether or not licking her hand to get her to let go of him would be too weird.

He decided it wouldn’t be.

“Ew!” Emerald jolted away from him, and he laughed. “You are the _worst.”_

Daily smiled, but his good ear flicked back. “It might be a good idea to get off this roof.”

“Agreed,” said Emerald, wiping her hand on the balcony’s railing. Mercury bent down and finished disentangling his leg from _Thief’s Respite._

“You can just drop me in the street,” he said. “My dad’s gonna need me for a mission in a few hours.”

The bullhead from Marcus’s latest job would be touching down in less than an hour, and Mercury needed to be home and feigning sleep by then. He’d never dared to sneak out of the house at night before, never cut so close to Marcus’s return time, because the guy had been known to be early, but. Emerald needed his help.

And, well, despite his snide and disaffected exterior, he cared deeply about his few close friends and would go to inordinate lengths to protect them from harm.

He just hoped Marcus wouldn’t be there in the dark waiting for him.

“Are you sure?” Emerald asked. “I—I know it’s important, but my part tomorrow is kind of tricky, and I was hoping you’d…”

“Em—” he handed _Thief’s Respite_ back to her, set it carefully in her hands—“you’re gonna do great.”

For this part of the job, it was best that they not leave too many traces of Mercury anyway. But he still would have been happier waiting in an alley for Emerald to run up and tell him how the job went than sitting trapped in his house with Marcus, wondering if it had succeeded.

“Right,” she said, with a little, flickering smile. “Right.”

And then her arm was around him and Daily’s was around her as he fired a long, sharp-edged line of metal from _Kid Gloves_ and let it lodge in a building across the street, and then the three of them were swooping down through the darkness, late spring air rushing past.

When they got within four feet of the asphalt, Emerald’s fingers tightened against Mercury’s waist for a second and then let him go. He rolled up into a crouch as his friends swung back up into the air. He watched the soft green glow of Emerald’s hair growing smaller and smaller until it vanished into shadows, then started back toward the suburbs at a run.

He had a strange feeling, then, that he wouldn’t be this happy again for a long time.

* * *

At eight a.m. Emerald walked through the glass double doors of the Print Records Building with her chin held high and her Semblance activated.

“Good morning, young man!” chirped the receptionist who sat at the nice glass table facing the doors. “How can I help you?”

Wearing the body of someone with no respect for other people’s personal space, Emerald leaned a hand on the table and smiled down at the receptionist.

“That old SDC building on the corner of Third and a Hundred and First,” she said. “I got a school project on the Schnees’ trade relations with Vale, and I thought the records might be a good place to start.”

“Great thinking!” The receptionist smiled. She looked just out of high school. Definitely young enough for the person whose form Emerald was projecting to consider her within hitting-on range. “Now, I’ll just need your name for our records.”

“Rex Aurum,” said Emerald, watching the receptionist jot it down on her notepad. “Remember that name, okay?” Her illusion grinned smugly, swept its eyes slightly lower than it needed to.

The receptionist ducked her head, ignoring the creepiness. Her tone was a little subdued when she spoke again. “You can find the accounts for that address on the fourth floor, filed with the other Third Street deeds.”

“Thanks, gorgeous.” The illusion of Rex winked and started for the elevator as the receptionist buzzed it open, her shoulders hunching in.

Emerald felt a pang of guilt. She knew the shrinking feeling that the receptionist was experiencing firsthand, knew how she’d readjust all her clothes just a little bit, scared that she’d somehow encouraged him.

But Emerald needed Rex to make an impression, and the impressions he left were generally unpleasant.

The second the elevator doors closed, she lowered her Semblance with a sigh of relief. The hard part was over.

Nobody was browsing up on the third floor, not this early on a Saturday, so Emerald let her Semblance rest. She’d need it to get back out, anyway.

The Print Records Building held accounts of every major transaction taking place within Vale, even the ones with other kingdoms. If, gods forbid, the CCT went down, the Records Building would still have all the deeds and titles and contracts the kingdom needed to limp along on its own.

And it would tell Emerald exactly where the SDC kept any money it routed through Vale. Wending through the tightly packed bookshelves of files, she followed the receptionist’s directions. The floor was laid out by street number, so it was pretty easy for her to track down the deeds and account information linked to the abandoned SDC building that had, until two months ago, been her home.

It was strange to open a folder and hold in her hands a copy of a deed that declared the building of which she had been the only occupant for six years the property of one Jacques Schnee, to see a place that she had slept and read and laughed in set down in print.

Gods, she missed her books.

She shook herself out of it. She had a mission. She flipped past the deed, looking through the financial records. The cost of the building looked more like a scroll number than an amount of money that any human being could possess. And that money had all come out of a special account (whatever that meant) in the downtown branch of the Vale Trust Bank.

Emerald blinked, then grinned. It was the same bank that had been hers and Mercury’s rendezvous point for years, and something about that felt right.

_Home turf advantage._

She committed the files to memory and set out for the exit, giving the receptionist a leering, gold-eyed smile as she left.

“As soon as Merc gets back from this mission,” she told Lav and Daily a few minutes later, “we can have him take out the cameras and start doing recon.” She grinned. "Phase Two."

But Mercury didn’t come back. Not after two days.

Not after two weeks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, an extremely cool thing! The wonderful Nainers has made [ an absolutely adorable piece of artwork for this story](https://doodlenainers.tumblr.com/post/637240511922569216/go-read-loved-by-almost-no-one-i-repeat-go)! It's so precious, you should definitely go check it out, along with the rest of their blog, which is full of excellent, sometimes angsty, often hilarious fuel for the beautiful clown car that is the V8-era Mercury fandom.
> 
> Speaking of Mercury, tune in next week to find out where he is! :(
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading, and I'm excited to talk with you guys in the comments <3


	19. Run Circles Round You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which cracks in Mercury's story begin to appear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: Marcus and the "Child Abuse" tag that follows him everywhere are off-page, but they are referenced

It had been seventeen days since they’d last seen Mercury.

“Did he mention how long this mission was supposed to be?” Lavender asked, pacing outside their tent while Daily was making a run for groceries.

“He didn’t,” Emerald sighed, resting her cheek on her hand as she sat cross-legged on the ground. He’d been gone for this long before, but usually he’d be sort of gloomy and sullen beforehand, like he was expecting it. There hadn’t been any of that this time, though. He’d been jokey and smiling and kind of genuinely sweet right up to the last second.

“I know this probably isn’t a question you wanna hear, Green, but what do you think the odds are that the Golds got ‘im?” She wrapped a hand around the hilt of one of her knives.

Emerald frowned. She’d given some thought to the possibility, late at night when it was her turn to keep watch and every shadow seemed teeming with monsters. She’d liked the thought so little that she’d refused to keep it in her head for long. She wanted to tell herself it was impossible, but then Rex’s voice would sound in her head—

_As for your boyfriend, I hear his fighting style’s kick-based. I wonder how well he’d fight if Mel here glued those pesky greaves to the ground._

Emerald forced down that lurking sense of foreboding.

“None,” she said stonily. “We’d know if they had.” The Golds would have already called in a hostage negotiation. Or just left Mercury’s body hanging from something tall. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“He’ll be fine,” she said. “Merc can run circles around those assholes. He’s quicksilver.”

Lavender looked down at her with a rueful smile. “I really never stood a chance, did I?”

“I—” Gods, poor Lavender really did not need Emerald prattling on about Mercury given how the breakup had gone—“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

Lavender shrugged and sat down beside her. “It’s okay. I’m pretty over it. I’ve punched some pillows and cried to Daily and eaten a pint of ice cream, checked all the boxes, really. Ever since you got shot, I—I just wanna be square with you again. I’ve never exactly been great at friends, so. I figure I better conserve the ones I’ve got.”

“That… wasn’t all I meant when I said ‘sorry.’” Emerald bit her lip. “I think—when you and me were together—I think I wasn’t being honest with myself. I think you knew what was going on with me—with me and Merc, I mean—more than I did, because I didn’t want to know, and that _really_ wasn’t fair to you, and I’ll always be sorry that I hurt you because—because I really like being one of your friends.”

“Hold up.” Lavender sat back on her elbows. “I was _right?”_

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you actually like-like Wolfboy.”

Emerald fidgeted for a second, feeling like she was about to admit to a felony. The thought had been there, in her head, for so long, but the idea of speaking it aloud, of making it real for somebody other than herself, was weighty and frightening.

She took a deep breath before she spoke. “Yeah. I think I do.”

“Oh, thank _gods,”_ said Lavender, and that was… definitely not the reaction that Emerald was expecting.

“What?”

“This means I’m not losing my mind, Green!” Lavender grinned. “I thought I was just being jealous and unreasonable, but I was _right!_ Take _that,_ Daily!”

Emerald raised an eyebrow.

Lavender waved a hand. “Oh, you know, Wolfboy would say some obnoxious flirty thing and you’d do That Thing where you call him an idiot while staring at him like he just invented sour straws and I’d complain to Daily about it, and he’d be all calm and reasonable like, ‘Friends express affection in different ways, Lavender. I hold your hand constantly but would rather die than be romantically entangled with you, Lavender, so you shouldn’t judge,’ and I would be like, ‘ _Dude!_ There is a _vibe!’_

“So, suck it, Daily! My girlfriend _was_ emotionally cheating on me! Who’s the loser now?”

Emerald laughed weakly, amused and embarrassed in equal measure. “I really did fall right into all the stereotypes, didn’t I?”

Lavender tilted her chin up, a crooked smile on her face. “Emerald Sustrai, master thief and textbook disaster bi.”

Emerald smiled. “Lav, I—I’m really glad we’re still friends.”

Lavender sat upright. “Me too, Green.” She frowned. “And as your friend, do I have permission to raise some concerns about your prospective boytoy?”

“Not if you refer to him as that,” said Emerald, wrinkling her nose.

“Yeah, yeah, you’d never use such a crude phrase to refer to someone that important to you, the two of you are the best of friends, forged in the fires of adversity, yadayadayada, I know the drill, okay? It’s just that the drill is mushy and disgusting.”

Emerald snickered. “Right. Your concerns?” This ought to be good.

“Green, you have no idea where the fuck he is right now,” said Lavender. “Like, the guy just straight-up vanishes for weeks at a time, and you—I _know_ you hate being alone.”

And… that concern was slightly more valid than Emerald had hoped it would be.

“He always comes back,” she said quietly.

“I know,” said Lavender. “But, like, the weirdness continues. He never tells us about these missions he goes on, which, I’m pretty sure minors going on Huntsman missions is against some kind of law, and like—do you even know his dad’s name?”

Emerald frowned. The silence about his missions, she could explain. She’d never be able to forget that day when they were twelve, when Mercury had told her about the Huntress who had died saving his life, the way he’d hunched against the wall and shivered. Mercury didn’t like talking about things that made him go small.

But his dad—he must have said it at least once, right? It was probably obvious and her mind was just blanking because she was used to hearing it, but… all there was in her head was a file labeled “Mercury’s Dad.” No name.

“I—”

“Okay, and this one’s for all the marbles,” said Lavender. “He’s been your best friend for almost seven years. What’s his last name?”

For years, it had quietly bugged Emerald that she didn’t have a last name to call Mercury by in the same wry, smirking way he called her “Sustrai.” But she’d never realized so completely what an odd, looming blank it was to have attached to her best friend’s name.

Her wide-eyed stare at the ground between her feet seemed to be the only answer Lavender needed.

“Hey,” she said, setting a hand lightly on Emerald’s shoulder, like she was ready to pull it away at the slightest indication that it wasn’t welcome there, “I’m not trying to take the wind out of your sails. I mean, do I think you liking him is gross and wrong in the way that me liking Daily would be gross and wrong? Absolutely. But I like the guy, honest. I just—I think there are some super weird things about your friendship that don’t look weird to you because you’ve been in it for so long, you know? And I think you might wanna ask him about some of those things away before you start picking out curtains. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Emerald, shivering a little. "I will.

"Just as soon as he gets back."

The next day, she took off for the suburbs at dawn.

She knew where Mercury’s house was, now, after she’d seen him turn into the yard on the night of their half-birthday right before everything went sideways. And she knew, on every level, that this was creepy and invasive, but it was _weird,_ right? It had taken her all of four months of being friends with Mercury to show him her terrace, and here they were, almost seven years into their friendship, and he had never deliberately told her where he lived.

Like his last name, it was a blank, and Emerald couldn’t afford blanks right now.

She needed his help. She needed to know where he was. She needed to be certain that her best friend wasn’t lying on a forest floor with his throat clawed open by Grimm, or crumpled in an alley somewhere, beaten down by a bunch of shitheads who by rights shouldn’t have been able to lay a finger on him.

In daylight, without Mercury’s hand in hers, there was something uncanny about the block where he lived. It took her a minute to put her finger on it. In all the neat, identical concrete driveways, there were no cars.

On the lawn that had lit up when Mercury had turned away from the road crouched a nondescript house with white plastic siding and a few little brick accents, and the second she took a step off of the sidewalk and onto the grass, a knee-weakening dread settled in her stomach.

The house sat there, and she forced down the sense that it was watching her as she took another step. Another. The dread grew stronger, like a hand on her chest pushing her backwards.

What was up with the windows? She was pretty close to the house now, but she couldn’t see a thing through them, not even blinds. And why was there a deadbolt on the _outside_ of the door…?

When she took another step, dread building in her chest suddenly spiked into the raw, visceral panic that she’d felt when the Golds had crashed through her roof.

Obeying every impulse that had kept her alive for the past decade, she spun on her heel and ran.

She only came to a halt when she got back to the tent—today it was perched on top of an apartment complex not far from the bank—and she bent double, hands on her knees, panting and feeling a little foolish.

It was just a kind of weird house, right? It was stupid how scared she’d gotten.

But she didn’t tell Daily and Lavender where she’d been. And she didn’t go back.

The days kept passing. And Mercury still didn’t come. He would come back, Emerald told herself. She had to trust him, like she always had.

That trust was the only thing that let her nab a couple hours of sleep each night instead of lying awake in a panic.

When another week slid by without a sign of Mercury, though, Emerald hit the level of frustration that made her say, “Fuck it, I’ll do it myself.” She and Lav and Daily couldn’t keep living out of this tent on the run forever. The weather was turning smothering, and they needed to carry out the next stage of the plan.

So, on Day Twenty-Five with no sign of Mercury, she was walking through the LargeMart carrying a bulky green purse that she’d lifted in preparation for the diamond heist. It drew a lot less attention than her beloved old rucksack always had, and that was good, because she’d swiped a couple of fairly expensive hi-res digital cameras into it.

“Emerald!” Cypress beamed, as always, and a little of the anxiety that had been clinging to Emerald for the past month flaked away. “Good to see you back on your feet, darlin’. Mercury told me you a took a nasty spill climbing.”

“You could say that,” Emerald said, one hand rushing to cover her side while the other set a packet of sour straws and a few lien on the counter.

Cypress’s brow furrowed. “I _did_ say that. What are you saying?”

And Emerald sighed, because dragging Cypress into this went straight against what little moral compass she had left, but the risk would be low, and the reward…

“I’m saying… some boys from school pushed me.”

While Cypress’s eyes were still wide, horror and fury taking over her face, Emerald said, “I have a favor to ask you.”

Lavender and Daily were waiting for her at the edge of the parking lot. She tossed one of the cameras to Lavender. “Let’s roll.”

They’d determined, over the past few days, that the cameras of the Downtown Vale Trust only watched the ground and that they had a blind spot right at the very center of the back wall of the building, and Emerald was ready to exploit that fact.

She, Lavender, and Daily perched on the roof of the building behind the bank, their eyes sweeping the empty alley below.

“Your time to shine, Day,” said Lavender, taking the primed camera that Emerald held out to her. The two girls spread out to the corners of the building, ready to cover as many angles as possible.

Emerald watched Daily take one deep breath, centering himself, before Lavender’s Semblance catapulted him straight into the blind spot by the wall. He landed in a crouch on the bricks, standing sideways. He pressed his hand into the mortar, and for a moment nothing happened.

Then the bank vanished, a wave of invisibility rolling over the outer walls and peeling them away to reveal tellers standing at booths, people fretting over brochures, and, most interestingly to Emerald, a pair of gleaming steel vaults, one set behind the other. After a split second, the larger vault, closer to the front, flickered out, too, but the smaller one, made of dark steel with a telltale white snowflake printed onto it, held strong.

Emerald snapped about fifty pictures in the instant before Daily’s Semblance gave out. Lavender’s Semblance pulled Daily, who had gone pale and faint, back onto the roof. Emerald and Lavender hooked their arms under his and ran before a panic could break out.

Hopefully, before too long, she could show these pictures to Mercury.

* * *

A month. A fucking _month._

The Seer Grimm had given Marcus a godsdamned vacation, and he spent the entire time holed up in the house, binge drinking and whaling on Mercury, who had just barely phased through the wall of his bedroom and launched himself onto his mattress in time to avoid being caught.

It was almost enough to make Mercury snap and phase through his bedroom window at a run.

Life with Marcus was near-unbearable at the best of times—no pulling comic books out of the bedroom wall to read, no making himself experimental bread, _yes_ constantly doing push-ups like a fucking automaton so that Marcus wouldn’t decide he was getting soft.

Knowing that Emerald was out there being hunted by the Golds, needing his help and not knowing where he was, made him want to claw straight through the walls. It made him pick stupid fights with Marcus because he needed to stop the smothering feeling in his chest, and yelling and kicking and having the air knocked out of him could make it stop for a while.

And then the Horrible Thing had happened. About three weeks into his enforced staycation, Mercury had been hunched over on the sofa, patching up a slashed eyebrow and some bloodied knuckles from his latest training session while Marcus ran to the liquor store. The Seer Grimm had floated out of Marcus’s closet with Hazel’s face drifting in its surface, and the big guy was asking Mercury about his injuries in a patient, concerned tone that made Mercury want to shatter the Seer Grimm to pieces like the glorified paper weight it was because he felt pathetic enough already, thanks very much.

And Emerald had appeared in the front window.

Mercury’s heart had frozen in his throat, and without meaning to, he’d said, _“No.”_

Stupid, stupid, _stupid,_ he’d led her too close to the house on their birthday, gotten too caught up in her eyes and her laugh and her hand in his to realize how near they were, and now she knew how to walk herself straight into a trap.

Marcus had been gone for half an hour already—he’d be back any second, and if he found Emerald—

Hazel floated up beside him, following his gaze. “That’s her, isn’t it?”

“She can’t be here.”

“She does look like a good friend for—”

_“She can’t be here!”_

Emerald took a step onto the lawn, her red eyes fixing on the windows with a determined look. If it weren’t for the one-way glass in the panes, she’d already be able to see the outlines of him and Hazel.

“I have an idea,” said Hazel, clearly trying to sound soothing. “If I can just lower Watts’s cloaking on this Seer…”

Suddenly, a wave of primal fear rippled through the room with the Seer Grimm at its center. Mercury clenched his hands into fists to keep them from shaking. Out in the yard, Emerald froze, her eyes going wide.

“Run,” Mercury whispered. He was on his feet now. “Run run run run _run._ Please run, Em.” He tried to beam the thought into her head, willing it with his entire being.

_Run._

Emerald’s eyes swept over the front of the house one more time.

Then she ran.

Mercury fell back onto the sofa like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Two weeks later, Marcus’s vacation ended. It would have been responsible for Mercury to wait an hour to be sure he was really gone, but instead he was fleeing the house at a sprint inside of ten minutes, feeling like something in his chest was going to snap if he spent another second inside those walls. He didn’t even bother to wait for the shoulder Marcus had dislocated three nights ago to heal.

There were six locations across the city that Em, Lav, and Daily were rotating their tent between at intervals. Mercury got lucky and found his friends at the first he checked—Lavender was sharpening her knives and threatening to toss the whetstone at Daily’s head while he laughed, and Emerald was pacing beside them, practicing her quick-draws in the mechanical way that meant she was lost in thought.

Her eyes fixed on him, and that look of concentration fell away into a smile that made him feel warmer than he had in weeks. “You’re back!”

It was hard, still feeling stiff and tired and ready to jump at every noise, to settle back into the version of himself that was fun to be around, but he mustered a passable smirk and said, “You miss me?”

“Asshole,” said Emerald fondly. Lavender rolled her eyes and glanced at Daily. Daily frowned, perplexed. A quick and entirely unspoken dialogue consisting mainly of head tilts and eye bulges ensued, at the end of which Daily nodded.

“It’s about time for a provision run, yeah, Day?” said Lavender, getting to her feet.

“I believe so,” said Daily. “Emerald, can you bring Mercury up to speed on the plan while we’re gone?”

“Yeah,” said Emerald, a confused frown settling on her face. “You guys have fun.”

And then the two of them had grappled over the side of the roof by Daily’s gauntlets, leaving Emerald and Mercury alone.

“Well _that_ definitely wasn’t weird,” said Mercury, realizing, suddenly, that Emerald would want to know where he’d been and that she had been to his house and that he had no idea how to tell her that she couldn’t go to his house, and he was so godsdamned tired, he couldn’t do this right now.

He punched one hand into the other, forcing himself not to wince at the burning feeling the gesture sent through his injured shoulder. “So, you want me to go hit some Gold patrols? I know I’ve been out for a month, and we don’t want them getting too comfy.”

“Uh, maybe in a couple days,” said Emerald, looking up into his face. She was _worried,_ he realized. “Merc, you look—”

“Like shit, I know,” he said easily, because it was true. He hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep in a month, not when Marcus had decided that it was much easier to spring attacks on Mercury while he was unconscious. His whole left arm was stiff from the shoulder down, and it stung when he moved it, and his hair was an overgrown mess, sticking up every which way.

“I was gonna say like you need to take a nap,” said Emerald, “but I guess those things are synonymous.” She frowned again. “Merc, there’s something I should—” she shook her head. Ah, that was probably going to be the “I attempted to visit your house” speech—“Never mind. Nap first.”

“That an order?” Mercury asked. Gods, how weak did he look? But if this put her off asking him where he’d been…

Emerald’s mouth was set in a line of resolve. “Yes.”

“Whatever you say, boss,” he said, and she smiled a little, but he couldn’t quite return it.

Emerald unzipped the front of the tent and waved him through, and he settled down on his back on the sleeping bag that had the most shitty paperback novels scattered around it, knowing it had to be Em’s.

“Your, uh. Your mission did go okay, right?” she asked, stretching out on her stomach alongside him and opening one of the paperbacks.

“Yeah,” he said, “sure. I mean, my shoulder got a little jacked up, and I slept for shit, but I’m okay.” He managed a chuckle. “Believe me, Em, I should be the least of your worries right now.”

That, he believed. With everything she had to put up with already, the last thing Emerald deserved was his bullshit weighing her down.

Emerald flicked the side of his head. _“Sleep.”_

He did. It was easy, in the gold summer light, because Em was there next to him, where he wouldn’t let anybody hurt her and she wouldn’t let anybody hurt him. The quiet flicking sound of her turning pages and the rustle of the wind had him out within five minutes.

_Emerald was standing in the sun-withered grass of the front yard again. Through the window, Mercury watched her take a step forward, and something inside of him cringed. She needed to be running away, not getting closer, she needed to be running now because—_

_Marcus._

_He was standing beside Mercury, patiently watching the door, and Mercury knew, somehow, that he didn’t have the power to touch Marcus, to stop him._

_Emerald needed to be running._

_Mercury slammed his hands against the glass, trying to get through and warn her, trying to phase, but Marcus was smirking now, and the glass was solid, and Mercury understood. His Semblance was gone, stolen, hoarded away in some dark corner of his father’s soul, and Emerald was walking toward the door without a care in the world, and Mercury couldn’t scream, and the frantic pounding of his hands made the windows crack, sliced his fingers so that his blood stained the glass, but Emerald didn’t see, she was opening the door and Marcus was smiling, drawing his weapon, and Mercury couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, and—_

“Merc!”

Mercury startled awake, breathing hard, and saw Emerald’s eyes, soft and bright with worry and staring into his own, before he saw anything else. Her hands were holding him by the shoulders, making his left one ache a little, from where she’d shaken him out of what he was slowly realizing had been a nightmare.

“Hey, Em,” he said, his voice rasping, and he couldn’t get out any more than that. His throat felt broken. He swallowed. It didn’t help.

She was okay. She was here. The urge to crush her against his chest and not let go was almost overwhelming. He fought it back. If he let her get too close… Marcus was always there waiting, somehow.

“Hey,” she said back, the worry in her eyes fading a little. “You’re here. It sounded like you were… somewhere else… for a second there. But you’re here now.”

Her face was so close to his—it made his breath rattle in his chest. Her mouth…

That soft little smile hit him like a battle-axe to the sternum.

It was too much, the way Emerald looked at him. She was too close, it wasn’t safe, couldn’t she see that it wasn’t safe? He had plenty of experience with taking control of himself the second he snapped out of sleep, and he used it now, before he could shatter.

He glanced away, breaking eye contact, and braced his hands on her shoulders, slowly pushing her away.

“Thanks,” he muttered. “I’m good now.”

Emerald sat back on her heels and frowned. “You don’t have to be.”

“I am,” he said, and he needed to move, to keep her from being close. “I think I can go hit a patrol now.”

He moved to stand up, but Emerald caught him by the wrist and pulled him back down.

“Mercury,” she said, “I need you to be here a lot more than I need you to be strong. You know that, right?”

He blinked. That made no sense whatsoever. Sure, Em could _want_ him here, but they both needed him to be strong. That was the only way that they could take down the Golds, that Mercury could keep Marcus from breaking him.

“Sure,” he said, and he tried to pull his wrist free.

Her hand tightened, and he fought down a half-second of panic. This was Em. She wouldn’t hurt him.

_“No,”_ said Emerald. “I’m not letting you do that thing.”  
  
“What thing?”

“That thing where whenever you’re not okay, you won’t shut up about how okay you are,” she said, and _damnit,_ Mercury was very familiar with that thing. He was, in fact, trying to do that thing even now.

That didn’t mean he was going to admit it.

“I’m not the one we need to worry about right now, okay?” he said, letting his voice run harsh. “I’m not the one that got shot.”

“Merc, I am _not_ going to fight you,” said Emerald, glaring even as her free hand fled to her side. “I need you to listen to me now, and you’re _going_ to listen.”

Mercury paused. Part of him wanted to snarl at her and run as far as he could before she could come too close to escape, before the nightmare could become real. But the part of him that remembered how many gravely stupid mistakes his twelve-year-old self had made acting on that impulse made him sit still and say, “Okay.”

“You’re in my life a lot,” Emerald said, her voice softer than before, “and—and don’t get me wrong, I’m _so_ glad about that. I probably wouldn’t be alive if you weren’t.” Her free hand rose from her side and curled around his forearm, her fingers tracing the scar that Piper’s flute had carved into it when they were eight. It was the only scar Mercury had that he didn’t have to cover, because she’d been there when it was made.

It was probably weird, but the fact that he’d gotten it fighting for her made him… kind of proud of it, he guessed.

Maybe that was what made his eyes slip shut for a moment, what made his fear and his anger dissolve, just a little, in the gentle feeling of her fingers gliding over his arm.

“But it sometimes feels like I’m not in yours.” Mercury’s eyes flashed open to see Emerald looking down, her mouth twisting. “I want to be there for you, like you’ve always been here for me, but—but there’s so many things about you that I just don’t know, and I don’t understand why—why you don’t feel like you can trust me with them.” Her voice went small at the end.

So _that_ was what had been running through her head when she’d stepped her foot onto his lawn. Answer after answer lodged in Mercury’s throat, none of them things he could say aloud.

_Because if I tell you, you’ll care even though I’m not worth it, and caring will kill you._

_Because maybe you’ll finally come to your senses and run when you realize how many parts of me are broken and jagged enough to break skin, and that will kill me._

“Em,” was what he ended up saying, covering the hand that she’d curved around his arm with his own, letting their fingers weave together over the scar. “You know everything about me that’s worth knowing.” He smiled a little. “Really. And I know—I know it bugs you that I don’t tell you more than that, it’s just that… there’s not much I wanna talk about. But—” He frowned. How to say this right?—“If there’s ever anything I need you to know, I’ll tell you. And whenever I have anything to tell, you’re always the person I wanna tell it to.”

Emerald was still for a moment, considering, her thumb moving back and forth over his wrist.

“Good enough?” Mercury asked.

She bit her lip and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. Okay.”

Emerald started smiling, then, so he must have stuck the landing. “It’s good to have you back.”

“Of course it is,” he said, freeing his good arm so that he could recline on it. “I’m a delight.”

By the time Lavender and Daily returned, Emerald was chasing Mercury around the rooftop reading _Ninjas of Love_ in a shouting voice while he fled with his hands clamped over his ears, yelling, “ _LALALALALALAICAN’THEARYOU!!!”_ and feeling, for the first time in too long, like himself.

Lavender announced her presence by yelling out, “Hey! Chow time, degenerates!”

Daily heaved a put-upon sigh as Emerald tackled Mercury to the ground while he was off-balance, pinning his good arm while she kept narrating at a shout and dissolving into laughter. Mercury was laughing, too, his embarrassment failing in the face of how good it was to see her like this again, all lit up and grinning.

The fact that that grin was for _him…_ that made Mercury feel kind of lightheaded, but maybe in a way that wasn’t bad.

“You didn’t bring him up to speed at all, did you?” Daily said tiredly.

Mercury smiled. And then he phased. Emerald let out an indignant little shriek as she fell through his chest and landed on the roof. He sat up through her, smirking at the wide-eyed look on her face before his own passed straight through it—oh shit, was that what she would look like if he ever leaned in close enough to?—and then going solid once he was free, reclining against her back.

“That she did not,” he told Daily. “I’m living in total ignorance.” He tilted his head back, nudging it against Emerald’s. “Real irresponsible of you, Em. I’m ashamed.”

He could actually feel her rolling her eyes. “I’m going to need food before I can explain anything to you.”

_“Chow. Time,”_ said Lavender again, with a dangerous emphasis in her voice.

The chow in question ended up being potatoes baked over the tiny propane burner that Lav and Daily traveled with. They were scorching hot and somehow still hard in the center, and not seasoned nearly enough, but the fact that Mercury was eating them in front of a little point of flame, surrounded by his friends, out in the unwalled summer evening, made them the best meal he’d had in over a month.

“So,” he said, polishing off the last of his food. “The plan?”

“We’ve finally picked up some recon photos of the vault,” Daily reported.

“Because Day fricking unleashed with his Semblance,” Lavender added proudly.

“But it looks aura-proofed. We’re going to need someone with more experience than we have here to tell us how to get through it.”

“So,” said Emerald, “I’ve been hitting the streets, finding lower down enforcers for the bigger gangs, starting to talk to them, seeing if their bosses might be willing to give us a consult in exchange for a cut of the loot.”

Mercury frowned. He didn’t like the thought of Emerald alone at night, meeting up with the kind of people that worked with Marcus. Lavender met his eyes.

“Don’t worry, Wolfboy,” she said. “I’ve been following her from the roofs. If anything ever goes south, she’ll be zipping right out of there before anyone has time to stop her.”

Mercury let his shoulders sink back a little.

“And I’ve been making good progress,” said Emerald. “We’ve got a few options for syndicates that might be willing to meet with us. I’m leaning toward the Tabards, personally.”

Mercury shot bolt upright, panic buzzing in his chest as the nightmare echoed through his head. Letting Emerald approach Marcus’s most reliable employers in the city would be as good as walking her straight to his front door “Em, _no.”_

“What?” she said. “They have the best track record for larceny of any gang in the city, and since larceny’s the name of the game for this part of the plan…”

“…it seems to be our most viable option,” Daily finished.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” said Mercury, forcing himself to keep his voice calm. If he snapped, if he let out the pressure in his chest, Emerald would start asking questions. “The Tabards also have a long, long track record of killing the people who cross them.”

“Finally!” Lavender burst out. “Somebody’s talking sense!” She looked at Mercury. “I have spent the past two weeks trying to explain to these idiots—” she jabbed a finger at Em and Daily—“that we do _not_ want to get tangled up with the Tabards and their fucking hitman.”

Emerald’s face turned thoughtful. “I mean, the things people have told me about him… they seem like they have to be at least a little exaggerated.” She glanced at Mercury, like she was nervous about what she was about to say next. “Have you—have you heard the stories too? Like, from your dad?”

Mercury froze, feeling like a cold shadow was creeping up on him. “Stories?”

Emerald nodded. “About Marcus Black.”

If he froze too long, if he let the fear that Emerald’s voice saying that name awoke in him show, it would ruin everything. She would know.

He started talking right away. He kept his tone neutral.

He had a lot of practice at that.

“They’re not exaggerations,” he said. “My dad… has come up against him a couple times, and—and he’s lucky he’s survived. Most people don’t. Most _Huntsmen_ don’t. If the Tabards figure out whose son I am, it’ll get ugly. For all of us.”

That last bit wasn’t a lie.

Emerald frowned, rankled. “Hm. I guess… I guess we could try some other options.”

Mercury held in a sigh of relief as the conversation turned away from disaster. After a few minutes, Daily brought out s’more supplies, and the calm and warmth started to come back to Mercury, as he sat back and leaned his shoulder against Emerald’s and made fun of her for being too much of a coward to let her marshmallows get properly charred.

Once night fell completely, they turned off the propane so it wouldn’t become a homing beacon for the Golds. Lavender stood, rolling out her shoulders, and walked away to the edge of the roof to keep watch, while Emerald and Daily sat hunched over a map of the city, planning out communications routes and adjusting their plans now that Mercury had, thank gods, steered them away from the Tabards.

It didn’t take long for the conversation to get into the weeds, and there was only so long he could sit in one place, so he got to his feet and started pacing the roof, snapping off kicks every few steps, testing his wounded arm to see whether it was any good at punching. By the time the itchy, impatient feeling in his chest had faded, he found himself standing near Lavender.

She was sitting with her back to him, her legs dangling over the side of the building. A rock about the size of a golfball was hovering a foot above her outstretched palm.

“Whatcha doin’?” Mercury asked, and Lavender cursed as the stone plummeted back into her hand.

“Well, I _was_ meditating,” she said testily. “I think. Maybe. I might be doing it wrong.”

Mercury sat down next to her. “What for?” Lavender didn’t seem big on introspection. It was one of the things that made her so bearable to talk to.

Lavender shrugged. “Green ever tell you that the first time I used my Semblance I couldn’t switch it off?”

“You, uh, destroyed the mall, right?” Mercury asked. That memory was buried amid all the horrible things that surrounded it, but he could still draw it out of the mess.

“And nearly got us both splattered on the side of a tour bus, yeah,” Lavender said. “I’ve got more of a handle on it now. It switches on and off pretty easy, and I can do just about any direction, but I want—” the rock floated up out of her hand and then stopped in space, and Mercury could see now that it was vibrating in place, moving up and down so quickly by such tiny amounts that it looked stationary, like she was toggling her Semblance on and off and on again to keep it in place—“better control.” The stone dropped back into her hand. “Of a lot of things. I don’t—I don’t wanna always be shooting up and down.”

Mercury nodded, leaning back on his good arm. He could understand that. If he could stop getting tossed back and forth between the person he wanted to be for Emerald and the person he had to be for Marcus, he would.

“So,” she said. “Did Green talk to you?” There was a note of caution in her voice that set him on-edge. If Lavender was trying to be diplomatic, then the Brothers were probably on their way back down to Remnant to make a final judgment.

“Yeah,” he said. “Some. Why?”

“Did you actually talk to her back?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, did you answer her questions, or did you find a really nice way of not answering them?”

Mercury opened his mouth, then closed it again. The rock wobbled up out of Lavender’s hand, waiting.

“I—” he shook his head. “I gave her as much as I could.”

“So I was right.” The rock shook a little. “It’s not just some dumb coincidence that we never know anything about you and your secret missions, which, by the way, I checked, and if they’re real, they’re illegal.” She looked at him, her eyes taking on an eerie glow in the moonlight. “You’re keeping shit from us. On purpose.”

And even though that sounded like an accusation, Mercury felt a strange sense of relief when he said, “Yes.”

The stone shot up a couple inches before settling back into place. “You know that’s the kind of thing that typically comes back to bite you in the ass, right?”

“Yeah,” said Mercury. “I know. But—Lav, I promise it’s to keep her safe. To keep all of you safe.”

“I’m sure you think that,” she said, and the stone lurched back down until it almost touched her hand. “But if we’re stumbling around blind because you’re keeping it from us, we can run right into whatever it is real easily.”

“Look, I get it,” Mercury grumbled. “Just threaten to launch me into the moon again and we can wrap this up, okay?”

Lavender shook her head. The rock went steady. “Control, remember? What I was gonna say, Wolfboy, is that if that thing you’re keeping from us, whatever it is, comes down on you, we won’t know how to help.” She frowned. “And I don’t like not being able to help my friends.”

“I know,” said Mercury, fighting through the shock of Lavender openly calling him her friend. “I know. But—I _have_ to hold this.” His hands clenched into fists.

“Do you, though?” Lavender asked. “Look. Lemme just—make an offer. Since you’re clearly so freaked about telling Green. You—you could tell me. And it… could be a secret. I’d only tell her if something bad happened, or if she was headed for trouble. Like a ‘break glass in case of emergency’ deal.”

Mercury looked at her, at the rock floating serenely above her hand.

She could hold it. He could trust her.

But the mounting pressure in his chest made him know that if he told anyone now, he would break. He wouldn’t be able to stop. His walls were what kept him upright, and taking a sledge hammer to them would be really fucking stupid.

He couldn’t let Marcus Black’s son out into Emerald’s world.

“I—thanks,” said Mercury. “But I’m good.”

Lavender studied him with a frown. “No, Mercury. I don’t think you are.”

But she didn’t say anything more.

* * *

A few drops of rain were drizzling from the night sky as Emerald and Mercury crept through the shadowed alleys near the docks. A month of bribing, haggling, and slowly creeping her way up the food chain had secured Emerald a face-to-face meeting with one of Vale’s most powerful crime lords.

Rolled up in her purse were zoomed-in versions of the pictures of the Schnee vault that she and Lavender had taken. The final phase of the plan was almost ready to begin.

Mercury smirked at a piece of graffiti as they passed: a green diamond shape with the word “LIVES” spray-painted next to it.

“Lav and Daily have been busy,” he said.

They were busy even now, probably running through the old downtown district and tagging buildings, relying on their superior night vision to stay clear of the Golds. Emerald’s plan hinged on Rex being absolutely hellbent on revenge, and she figured that covering half the city in taunting graffiti would probably do the trick.

Lav and Daily would also be traveling with a bag containing all the wallets Emerald had lifted in the past week—rewards for every low-ranking Gold that had agreed to hers and Mercury’s proposition.

The last few gears were slotting together, and soon the machine would run.

At the end of the alley stood a metal door guarded by a single, fridge-sized man in a leather aviator jacket.

When Emerald and Mercury reached him, he squinted at them in confusion before crossing his arms and saying, “Password.”

“I need to pick up a spare,” said Emerald, and, with a mildly bemused expression, the guy heaved the door open, revealing a flight of concrete steps that delved down into the earth. With Mercury close behind her as a rearguard (“Sooo, I guard your rear?” he’d asked, raising an eyebrow, the first time she’d used the word), Emerald began the descent.

The door slammed shut behind them, leaving the low orange lights along the wall as the only source of illumination.

“The hell kind of a password was that?” Mercury whispered.

“My best guess? A needlessly elaborate bowler hat pun.”

“Gross.”

At the foot of the staircase was a long, low-lit room with a bar running down the right-hand side and several bigger-time crooks than Emerald would ever be milling around on the green carpet, drinking tiny drinks out of fancy glasses that looked way too breakable for Emerald’s taste.

None of them were who she was here for. At the back of the room, though, she spied a flash of red hair, and she waved Mercury forward after her. Sitting at a booth at a polished round table, in the process of correcting his eyeliner, was Roman Torchwick.

Even when they drew level with the table, though, he didn’t look up.

Okay. This was a test. She could be patient.

But of course Mercury couldn’t, and he pointedly cleared his throat within three seconds.

Torchwick looked up and squinted. “Okay, which guard do I need to fire for letting a couple of toddlers into my speakeasy?”

“Your doorman?” said Emerald. “When I gave him the password?”

“Hmmm,” said Torchwick. “I won’t lie, kid, I’m impressed you managed to weasel it out of someone, so I’m gonna let you and your rude friend here go alive as long as you don’t interfere with my eleven o’clock.”

“We _are_ your eleven o’clock,” said Mercury, crossing his arms.

“My eleven o’clock is plotting a high-profile bank job, and I’m not sure you’re old enough to be tying your shoes by yourself. You know, making the bunny ears is a sort of advanced concept, and I just don’t think you’re there yet.”

Annnd now Emerald’s patience was gone too. She whipped the photographs out of her bag and slammed them down on the table.

“Believe us now?”

Mercury smirked.

Torchwick glanced at her, then at the photos. He stubbed out his cigar, squinting over the images. Emerald saw the gleam of interest spark in his eye.

“Toddlers,” he said, “pull up some high-chairs. You’ve got a meeting.”

“So,” he went on, once they were all settled around the table, “your little plan is doomed.”

“How?” asked Emerald, leaning forward.

“Well, for starters, _that—_ ” Torchwick tapped the picture of the vault that all Daily’s aura had failed to render invisible—"is in an aura-proof field that’s gonna fuck up any Semblance-based plans you’ve got.”

“Yeah,” said Emerald, “but if we knock out the power source—”

“Then the capacitor here—” Torchwick pointed—“brings back power to the bank overall in two seconds and to the aura-proofing field in thirty, so unless you’ve got someone on your little crew who can speed-walk through walls…”

Emerald and Mercury exchanged a glance.

“Okay, you look like you’re feeling real smart right now, so I’m gonna assume you do, in fact, have that. In that case… you may be very, very _slightly_ un-doomed. By the way, kids, do you want anything to drink? In sippy cups? I think we’re low on apple juice, but—”

“We’ll pass,” said Mercury, an edge to his voice, and Torchwick looked sharply at him.

“Hold up a second.” Torchwick’s eyes narrowed in concentration. Under the table, Emerald saw Mercury’s hand curl into a fist. “I know you.”

_Shit._

Mercury had mentioned that his dad’s tendency to take on bounty missions might make him recognizable to a few people in the criminal underground, but he’d insisted on going with Emerald to guard her rear anyway. They had a dumb fake name and everything picked out just in case. She hoped it’d hold.

“I thought you didn’t like associating with toddlers,” said Mercury dryly.

“I don’t, but…” Torchwick kept squinting. “Something about the nose… What’s your name, kid?”

“Slate Sable,” said Mercury, without a second’s hesitation.

Torchwick smiled. “Bullshit.” He stared at Mercury for a long moment before shaking his head. “Eh, it’ll come to me.”

Mercury’s shoulders lowered a tick.

“Now, you, the bearable one.” Torchwick turned to Emerald. “You need any more of my infinite wisdom?”

Emerald shook off the nerves and got her bearings back. If she wanted to be treated like a professional, she needed to act like one.

“The power source,” she said. “Where is it? And how do we knock it out?”

“Well, there, you’re in luck,” said Torchwick. “This old hunk-of-junk bank runs out of the electrical tower a block and a half to the southeast. It's pretty flimsy, too. One good HE round could take it down, and if you take down the tower, you take down the power. Ugh. I apologize for the rhyming, kiddoes. It wasn’t deliberate.”

“I think we can find it in our hearts to forgive you,” said Emerald. “And to cut you in on ten percent of our profit, which… let’s just say our plan has some wrinkles in it that might make that amount come in a kind of unusual form.”

Torchwick sat back. “Fifteen.”

“Eleven.”

“Fourteen, and that’s final.”

“Twelve point eight.”

“Eesh, fine. You’re the one who’s gonna have to bust out a calculator for that.” He stuck out his hand, and Emerald shook it.

“I look forward to working with you in the future, Sippy Cup,” he said solemnly. “And unless you want me to call you that forever, I’m going to need your real name.”  
  
“Emerald Sustrai,” she said, and Torchwick nodded.

“Well, Miss Sustrai, I wish you and ‘Mr. Sable—‘” he flashed the most exaggerated air quotes Emerald had ever seen—“the _very_ best of luck.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Emerald, because professionals were polite, right? And then she and Mercury were hurrying up the stairs and back out into the night.

The rain was starting to come down faster now, turning from a drizzle to a downpour. Beside her, Mercury looked like he’d seen a ghost.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, but his eyes were wide and panicked.

She nudged him with her elbow. “Hey. You’re not doing that thing, are you?”

“I might be doing that thing,” he admitted. “If that pumpkin-headed dipshit figures out whose son I am—I hope it doesn’t make trouble for you.”

Emerald set a hand on his back. “I hope it doesn’t make trouble for you, either.” She could imagine a lot of ways in which Torchwick letting a Huntsman know that he’d met with said Huntsman’s son could get Mercury into trouble.

“Thanks,” he said. “Speaking of, I should—”

“Get home, I know.” Emerald smiled ruefully.

“Yeah.” His shoulders tightened. “I’ll see you tomorrow, though. I’ll be there.”

“I know you will,” Emerald said. “You don’t want to miss the grand unveiling of the final stage of my evil plan. I think Daily's bringing popcorn.”

“Not for the world,” said Mercury, a real smile crossing his face.

Then he leapt up onto one roof and Emerald grappled onto another, and they parted ways as the first clap of thunder rang out through the night.

In two weeks, if everything went to plan, Emerald would be the victor of a months-long turf war, a successful bank robber, and the owner of a nice apartment in the smart-cops half of Vale.

And she still wouldn’t know her best friend’s last name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Emerald and Lavender: Um, whatcha got there?  
> Mercury, holding back nearly sixteen years of intensely repressed trauma and abuse: A smoothie.
> 
> I can't believe we're only two weeks out from the finale of this arc! Which means that next week, it's time for the final showdown between EMLD and RMOR. I'm excited to share it! Also, due to some IRL things going on around New Year's that will probably keep me away from the internet for a few days, the next chapter is going up on Wednesday of next week, a day early.
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> As always, I'm excited to talk with you guys in the comments (and to apologize for last week's cliffhanger...) :D


	20. The End of the Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which EMLD makes a final stand against RMOR, unaware of a greater danger that draws closer every moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well here we are almost at the arc finale! This is one of the more eventful chapter in the fic, and a quick disclaimer: This chapter was drafted before Volume 8 premiered, which means that due to the information I was operating with at the time and that I used to make follow-up plans, some things aren't going to line up with canon.
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> And I now have here.... a super long weird list of content warnings.... :/
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> cw: Graphic depictions of violence, of a slightly higher degree than has been present in the story thus far, alcohol abuse, referenced domestic and child abuse, eye trauma in the seventh POV section, more than canon-typical gun violence, and something that might count as body horror?
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> Further, for people who would like to experience the narrative equivalent of a jumpscare, scroll past the rest of this warning really quickly and enjoy at your own risk. Everyone else, follow me down into the next paragraph!
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> All right, my fellow anxious people who like to know what to expect, the narrative jumpscare in question is that the first, fourth, and seventh sections of this chapter are in Marcus's POV. As you would expect, they are pretty disturbing because he is a horrible horrible person who considers his purpose in life inflicting violence on others. So. It's going to be unpleasant.
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Marcus was going to have to do something about his son.

The little shit had been _looking_ at him lately, chin up, eyes defiant. It was the same face his nagging bitch of a mother had worn before she ran. He’d thought she’d be too soft to leave the new, weak, pathetic thing she’d birthed into his house. He hadn’t bothered to stamp that look off of her face.

Within a week, she’d been gone, with a pair of kitchen knives and his old hiking boots—he’d taken all her other shoes and burned them.

In hindsight, he should have taken her legs.

In fifteen years, he’d never found her, and the knowledge that she might not have been eaten by a mountain lion within the first week, that she might instead be out there somewhere in the world, eating and laughing and making that face and not fearing him, burned.

So when her son’s eyes, lighter than hers but the same shape, sharpened in that angry, unwavering way, Marcus wanted to blacken them.

That was the face of someone who’d forgotten the meaning of fear. Nearly sixteen years old without even the faintest _hint_ of a Semblance, and the runt had the nerve to look at Marcus like he’d earned the right to do it.

Marcus narrowed his eyes and slid his flask out of his boot. He didn’t have time to set the boy straight right now. He had a truly inconvenient job to carry out before his bullhead left for the coast, so he settled for firing a warning shot at his son’s shoulder, a quick reminder of who ran this house.

Mercury dodged easily, retreating behind the dining room table. That mutinous gleam was still in his eye.

“Have a great trip, Pops.” He sneered.

When he got back, Marcus decided, he would beat that look from his son’s face. Permanently.

He took a drink and stormed out the door.

* * *

Mercury waited barely fifteen minutes after Marcus left before he started his run downtown. Today, Emerald’s plan was finally going down. It was past noon already. He couldn’t afford to be late.

There was something reassuring about the warm summer wind running alongside him. The sun shone with the same orange-gold light that it had on the day he’d met Emerald—the day he’d run over the rooftops with her and felt suddenly light, his aches and fears forgotten. Strong. Free. That was how he needed to be for Emerald today.

When he rolled up to the rendezvous point—Emerald’s abandoned terrace—she, Lavender, and Daily were already waiting for him.

“Yeesh, Wolfboy, did you stop for brunch?” Lavender’s longknives were polished to a sheen, the grav dust in their handles glowing.

“You don’t want me going into battle on an empty stomach, do you?” Mercury shot back.

Daily raised a hand, his other arm braced nervously across his chest. “This may be an inopportune time for quips.”

Emerald nodded. “Merc, ready to pick up some flares?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.”

Lavender and Daily stood back as Emerald and Mercury paced the floor with downcast eyes. If Rex was a gang leader worth his salt, and Emerald, unfortunately, had confirmed that he probably was, he’d have had Orion tag every last item in her apartment and then waited for them to move. Picking up a couple souvenirs from their shattered home on the way to the bank would lead the Golds right to them.

Mercury bent down and picked up his little stone wolf. Beside him, Emerald scooped up the remains of her cat and slid it into her pocket.

Daily gently folded back the corner of Emerald’s rumpled bedroll and drew out another reason why they couldn’t turn back on this plan—a hand, made of gold, that had belonged to some girl Mercury had never met, who he would never meet, now.

Daily cradled the hand in his own, his fingers skimming over the gold ones as he worried his lip with his teeth, then curling into the same clawed, desperate shape.

“It—she must have been so scared,” he said quietly. “The records I found on her from the adoption people said she was really good with the younger kids. Gods, you can still see her fingerprints…”

Lavender’s hand closed on the gold one and lifted it carefully out of Daily’s grasp. “I got it,” she said. She tied a piece of string around it, leaving a wide loop, and tucked it into a pouch that hung from the belt of her skirt. “She’ll rest easier when we bring those fuckers down.”

Daily’s fingers laced together, and he stared down at them. “I'm not sure it works like that.”

It took a few moments, after that, for Emerald to break the silence again.

“We should pick one more thing,” she said, “just in case.”

Mercury frowned. Emerald’s books were all waterlogged and ruined, strewn across the floor. It was weird, being a person whose chest hurt at seeing the books wounded like that. For Emerald, who thought of the books as old friends, seeing them this way was probably even worse. She hadn’t been back to her place since she’d been driven out of it in the night. Her eyes were misty as they surveyed the ground.

Her left hand hung free at her side, and Mercury took it, held it.

_You’re gonna make them pay for this._

Emerald’s hand tightened around his, and a determined line formed between her eyebrows. “I know what we’re taking.”

The cow pillow was sodden and mud-smeared, almost beyond recognition, and it stank of mildew.

“Are you serious?” Mercury asked, wrinkling his nose.

“I am,” said Emerald with a ghost of a smile. “It’s always been a bringer of chaos.”

She gazed fondly down at it, and for a second he saw it the way she did—the first joke they’d ever shared, lying defiled in her hands. Now that was a bringer of war if ever there was one.

“Just as long as you don’t make me carry it,” said Mercury, holding up his hands.

Rolling her eyes, Emerald slung it across her back on a belt, like a bandolier. “Let’s get it done.”

* * *

Their run to the bank was silent. Daily’s no-quip policy held strong. Emerald’s stomach felt full of bats, her nerves eating at her. Months of stealth and planning and subterfuge all hung on the next uncertain hour. It was all or nothing, now, and if any of them put so much as a foot out of place, they were doomed.

But if they succeeded… they’d be bringing justice to bad people. Even if it meant swerving far outside of the law, that was what Huntresses did, right?

Emerald had set an alley two blocks east of the bank as their attack point, chosen a sluggish Tuesday afternoon when the plaza in front of the bank would be largely free of witnesses, everyone hiding inside from the summer heat. As they hopped roofs toward the deserted plaza, Emerald slowed behind the others and dropped to the ground, creeping closer to the columns of the bank. Mercury swung down from the roof and fizzled out the camera from above as he did so. She drew near to the glass double doors, peering through as she activated her Semblance.

Sitting in a chair by the door and watching her through a familiar pair of cat’s eye glasses was Cypress. Emerald smiled as she winked a single green eye. Cypress had been surprisingly on-board with perjuring herself, but she’d need a couple more witnesses to back her up.

With the cameras down, their word would be all the police had to go on.

There were eight people aside from Cypress in the lobby. Of those, six were completely immersed in work or scrolls or books they’d brought to pass the time. But one of the tellers was looking up at the door, and a woman was closing a magazine with a look of discontent, her eyes straying toward the exit.

Emerald grabbed hold of both of their minds, watched them squint as they saw Rex Aurum, sword in hand, standing in the plaza with the Janus twins and gesturing toward the bank, all three of them looking up to the roof like they were planning to climb it before splitting up and slinking off toward the alleys.

Emerald held the illusion for a second more to get out of the way of the doors and then sprinted toward the target alley two blocks away, nursing a headache. As she walked, she watched the electrical tower two blocks away, running the geometry through her head again and again.

She’d need just the right angle if she was going to get this right.

Her friends were waiting for her at the end of the alley, nervous and quiet. Daily re-checked the settings on _Kid Gloves_ again and again, making sure they’d form solid blades or whip-like cables whenever he needed them to. Lavender was zipping and unzipping the duffel bag for the cash over and over again, an unfixed look in her eyes as she stared at the mouth of the alley.

Mercury, though, cracked a smile when he saw her. “Mind handing me the pillow?”

Puzzled, Emerald tossed it to him. Instead of catching, he shot out a leg and kicked it up into the air, then kicked it again when it started to come down, then lobbed it up again with an elbow strike.

Daily looked up from his wrist launchers and smiled as Mercury moved in awkward circles, playing a needlessly extreme one-man round of hackysack. Lavender stopped her zipping, her shoulders relaxing. It was a silly little thing, but distracting, soothing, and the nerves of waiting faded from Emerald’s stomach and left her feeling steadier.

Mercury cast her a smug, knowing little smile, and she realized that he was doing it on purpose, calming her down, making her want to laugh instead of tremble.

No matter what happened today, she’d always love him for that.

They were all still gathered in a circle, watching Mercury bobble and kick, when Rex, Russel, and the Janus twins appeared at the mouth of the alley. Emerald caught the pillow out of the air. In one quick motion, she holstered it and drew her revolvers.

Showtime.

“Nice little setup you got here, Grimm-Eyes,” Rex said, gesturing broadly at the alley, his sword already in hand. He smiled. “Or it would be, if I was stupid enough not to bring backup.”

The rooftops on either side of the alley suddenly bristled with a solid two-dozen low-ranking Golds, but Emerald stayed calm as she watched them assemble. She sought out Xan, the sentry, with her eyes, and he nodded. Subtly, with the hand that wasn’t holding a lead pipe, he held up five fingers, then three.

Eight of the boys were compromised, then, bought out by stolen wallets and the promise of freedom from their piece-of-shit boss. More were probably wavering, ready to throw in their lot with whichever side was winning. Even if Rex refused to go along with Emerald’s challenge, they had a decent shot.

“You had a pretty good run,” Rex said. “But it ends now.”

Emerald stomach clenched at the sound of his voice, like it remembered what had been done to it the last time she’d heard him speak, but she stood strong, shoulders squared, guns ready.

“You _do_ have us outnumbered,” she admitted.

_But not by nearly as much as you think._

“But where’s the glory in that?”

Rex frowned, puzzled.

“I mean, picture it for a second. A cold winter’s night. Your minions all hunched around a trash fire, swapping stories about their boss. What are they going to say to each other? ‘Oh yes, I remember Rex’s most daring victory, when he defeated the Grimm-Eyed Girl by siccing twenty-eight people on four.’” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know about you, but _I_ wouldn’t want to look that cowardly no matter how much turf it got me.”

Rex’s eyes were narrowing, his mouth pressing into a line as all his people watched him. That pressure, Emerald hoped, would be enough.

“And how do you think I should settle it, Grimm-Eyes?” Rex asked.

“Simple,” she said. “You and your three best.” With _Thief’s Respite,_ she gestured to the four of them. In the brief second that the barrel was pointed at him, Russel flinched. Even the Janus twins looked uncomfortable, Meleager holding his mace awkwardly, Orion nervously skimming the arrows at his hip with his fingers. “Against me and mine.”

“EMLD versus RMOR,” said Daily.

Mercury smirked and punched one hand into the other. “Vytal style.”

“If we win,” Emerald went on, “you clear off the streets. Go back to Signal, play your little Huntsmen games, and leave us in peace.”

That was a lie. The thought of Rex Aurum walking around, fully trained, with the expansive power of a Huntsman’s license made Emerald feel sick to her stomach. She’d make sure, after today, that he wouldn’t be fit to be any kind of Huntsman. Being a Huntress was _her_ dream, and that sack of shit didn’t get to share in it.

“And if you win…” Emerald trailed off.

Lavender stepped forward. “You kill us, probably. So we’re not gonna let that happen.”

“Is that a fact, Horns?” Rex’s smile was ugly. “Because I remember you singing this same tune right before I took your friend’s ear off.”

Lavender growled, and Mercury had to set a hand on her shoulder to keep her from charging forward.

“You’re on, Grimm-Eyes,” Rex said, and his eyes fell on Daily. “After all, your team’s looking a little lopsided.”

Emerald gritted her teeth and slid into a fighting stance, shifting _Thief’s Respite_ into kama form.

“Bring it. Three.”

“Two.” Rex’s sword glowed, fully charged.

Emerald activated her Semblance.

“One,” she said.

The alley exploded into violence.

* * *

“Tea, Marcus?”

In answer, Marcus took a long pull from his flask.

Alyson Rothschild, the boss of the Tabard crime syndicate and one of his most reliable employers, set down her almost-certainly-poisoned teapot with a small, “Well, I tried” shrug. Several years Marcus’s senior, she was a bold-faced woman with a penchant for scarlet and a tendency to leave dead husbands in her wake. The count, if he recalled, stood at five, now.

The first—Argent—had left her with two daughters, both of them past twenty now, but still living in the house. Griselda, the younger of the two, was spoiled and silver-haired and excellent at not asking questions when her mother pointed her at a target. His own little silver-haired burden didn’t have half her precision and obedience.

Something was holding the boy back, and when Marcus found out what it was, he would shatter that something to pieces.

But it was Alyson’s eldest daughter, Brunnhilde, that had brought him here today. Alyson had never let him see the girl, and now, thanks to Watts, he knew why.

Tabard, the second husband, had left Alyson with full control of his criminal enterprises, which she ran a damn sight better than he ever would’ve.

The fourth husband—and at that point, Marcus had stopped bothering to remember their names—had come with a daughter attached, a skinny, skulking, coal-eyed thing.

The stepdaughter stood behind Alyson’s shoulder, a resentful light in her burnt-amber eyes.

Marcus fought back the urge to shake his head. It was all too clear that Alyson had taught the girl to hate, but not to fear. Even if he wasn’t going to bring down Rothschild crime dynasty today, he had a sneaking suspicion that that stone-faced girl would finish them off within a few years.

He wouldn’t make the same mistake with Mercury.

“Cinder,” said Alyson sharply, and she gestured to the tea tray. “Clear this away.”

The girl scowled, but did as she was told and vanished from the room.

The second she was gone, Alyson fixed him with a hard stare. Her eyes were as black as her hair—just like his son’s bitch of a mother.

If he thought of it that way, this job might be more enjoyable than he’d anticipated.

“In the seven years you’ve worked for me,” she said, “you’ve never come to my home uninvited. So I can only assume that you’re either here to become Number Six—” she smirked—“and frankly, I _would_ be flattered—or you’re here to kill me.”

No bullshit. That made Alyson a good boss. Leagues better than all Watts’s sneering and sidewinding. It was almost a shame.

But Brunnhilde Argent had silver eyes, and rules were rules. And Alyson Rothschild would rather die than let him kill her firstborn. He’d seen it, the way she spoiled her daughters and petted them. It was the only thing about her that was soft.

“It’s nothing personal,” he said, his hand creeping toward his weapon. Alyson would be ready to raise that red, black-widow shield of hers any second.

“A true professional,” said Alyson, raising her chin. “I’d expect nothing less.”

For someone who hadn’t seen a real battle in over a decade, she put up a decent fight. It took him nearly a full minute to wrench her shield out of her hand and put a bullet in her chest. From the floor below him came a muffled thud, a quickly stifled cry. The daughters.

He started for the stairs.

* * *

Emerald had a plan. With her speech, she’d drawn all Rex’s focus. That would make it easy for Mercury to leap in and catch him off guard. With her Semblance, she’d throw off Meleager, keeping him from sticking anybody to the ground, and then go for Orion while Lav took Mel and Daily held off Russel.

That was the plan.

What happened instead was this: in the second before she said “One,” Emerald reached her mind out toward Mel and took hold, showing him all four members of her team spreading out across the alley, all of them in slightly different places than where they actually stood.

On one, she flexed her legs to run. Her feet didn’t move. The awful tugging sensation of Meleager’s Semblance held her glued in place. Beside her, she saw Mercury’s eyes widen slightly, his legs stuck too. That was the closest he’d get to letting himself look scared in a fight, she knew, and the fact that he was frightened enough for even that tiny lapse in control made her stomach twist.

Had she not acted in time? Had her Semblance failed? Lavender and Daily looked stuck too. Mel had a look of confusion on his face, his eyes darting between Emerald’s actual location and the place where she’d projected an image of herself. So her Semblance _had_ gotten him. Then why…?

Her eyes fell on Orion, who was gazing intently at the four of them, his brow furrowed in concentration. It was the same look Mel had been wearing when he’d pinned her to the floor of her terrace.

Because that wasn’t Orion. It was Meleager. And the Mel she’d hit with her Semblance, the one who held his mace so uncertainly… _that_ was Orion.

A clothes swap. The oldest trick in the Janus twins’ collective book. Emerald had a split second to feel stupid before, with a burning hum, Rex’s sword sliced through the air in front of him, shooting out a ray of crackling blue light. Mercury grabbed her arm, and the beam passed through both of them harmlessly, his Semblance keeping them out of harm’s way. The beam passed through Lavender, too, without doing any damage, but Mercury couldn’t reach all the way to Daily, who cried out as the beam crackled into his ribs.

_You don’t get to touch my friend again, you piece of shit._

“Orion!” Emerald shouted the second she had her breath back, before she could fully blink the spots out of her eyes. “Fire on Orion!”

Lowering her Semblance, she followed her own advice, training both pistols on the false Orion and firing. He dodged, then ducked one of Lav’s knives as it went scything overhead only to blunder straight into an invisible force that seemed to hook behind his knees and knock him off his feet.

Daily’s _Kid Gloves,_ fully extended and fully invisible.

Emerald grinned and fired a round into Mel’s ribs the second he hit the ground, but Rex was already charging into melee range, his sword slicing toward Mercury, who had no way to block the hit with his greaves out of commission. Emerald flipped the right half of _Thief’s Respite_ upside down and swung it upward, catching Rex’s blade with her own an inch from Mercury’s ribs.

Mercury smirked and landed a right hook to Rex’s jaw. The smirk faded some when Rex didn’t even flinch.

Emerald reached out with her Semblance, but not for an enemy this time. For Mercury. No visions. Just a voice in his ear that nobody else would notice.

“This is going south,” she said. “The second your feet get unstuck, you and Lav need to _move,_ okay?”

The distraction of using her Semblance cost her, and Rex’s sword swept around and struck her in the shoulder, making her wince.

She fired a round into Rex’s chest that made him back up a step. Mercury shot her a questioning look. She nodded. They needed to get the full plan in motion before Rex had a chance to use up all the energy in that godsdamn sword.

And before Lavender and Mercury’s auras got so low that they wouldn’t be able to do their part of the job.

Meleager cried out as one of Lavender’s knives scored across his chest, and she did the same as one of those godsdamned exploding rounds burst against her stomach. Mel’s concentration had to have broken.

Emerald tried to run, and then she _was_ running, her feet free as she charged at Rex. Behind her, she could hear the telltale banging of Mercury taking potshots at Russel from a distance that the kid narrowly blocked with his knives.

Orion was tossing Meleager his mace, and Mel was throwing his bow and belt to Orion. Daily and Lavender hung back, giving them the space to carry out the swap.

One of Emerald’s favorite little flourishes in the plan hinged on Orion having his arrows.

Right now, she needed to take Rex’s ranged option out of commission until just the right moment. She got in close, watched anger flash across his gold eyes as she dodged an upward stab from his sword and got inside his guard.

With a cry, she spun her left knee, the gold-plated one, into his gut, and forced him to stagger back a step, clutching his stomach.

He swung sideways at her, but she coiled into a ball and rolled under the swing, coming up on his other side and landing a hit on his arm with her kama. This up-close, compact style of fighting didn’t come naturally to her—she liked to stretch out and soar and strike from behind—but over six years of training with Mercury meant that she was no slouch at it either.

And as long as she was forcing Rex to deal with her face-to-face, he wouldn’t be firing that light cannon.

Orion slung his belt back around his waist and fired an arrow that made the pavement at Lav, Merc, and Daily’s feet explode. All three of them flew backwards.

As she dodged another swing, Emerald heard Mercury say, “That’s it, I’m out. Knives?”

 _“Done,”_ said Lavender.

“Then let’s get outta here.”

“No, wait!” Emerald and Daily shouted in unison. Emerald reached out with her Semblance, and her head pounded. The next swing of Rex’s sword nearly took her ear off, but her concentration held.

After all, thanks to him, she’d had worse.

She grabbed Mel’s mind, showed him Mercury and Lavender getting to their feet a couple of yards away from where they really stood, showed him Orion circling behind him instead of advancing on her friends.

Lavender grabbed Mercury’s arm, and then the two of them were falling up out of the alley at an angle. Xan and his buddies shoved their fellow Golds out of the way, making room for them to topple past the roof.

 _“Get them down here!”_ Rex bellowed, punctuating the order with an overhand strike that only didn’t slice Emerald’s head in half because she twisted aside at the last moment.

Orion nodded and fired an arrow up after Lavender and Mercury that trailed a cord affixed to his belt.

And then Lavender’s Semblance had him, just like they’d practiced, and he lost his footing and shot up into the air as the cord went taut.

Sparing a final, good-luck thought for her friends as they plummeted toward the bank, Emerald pivoted around Rex and carried out a combat flip that landed her closer to the mouth of the alley. Daily slid between Russel’s legs, knocking him off his feet in the process, and came up beside her, fists raised.

In the split-second of confusion, Emerald loaded one of her remaining grav rounds into each half of _Thief’s Respite._ Now that Rex thought he had the upper hand, it was time for the tricky part.

A glance over her left shoulder showed her the electrical tower, rising up in the distance behind her. The angles would work. But the timing needed to be perfect.

“So much for your boyfriend, Grimm-Eyes,” Rex gloated, his sword charged and glowing.

Merc and Lavender would be close to the bank now. She needed to _move,_ and while it would be nice to devise a snappy comeback, she didn’t have the brainspace, not with her head throbbing and time running short _._

She curled her lip in a snarl of rage and fired the left-hand side of _Thief’s Respite_ down at a diagonal, launching herself upwards toward the wall at the right side of the alley. With a midair twist, she fired the second grav bullet down into the wall, changing her trajectory so she flew up past the roofline in a lazy, tempting arc.

If her geometry was off—

If Daily wasn’t ready—

Rex raised his sword with a yell and fired straight at Emerald, blue light searing through the air, filling her vision.

The familiar, invisible metal of _Kid Gloves_ coiled around her waist and yanked her downward.

The beam sheared through the air between her arm and her side, just missing her. It flew past her for block after block.

And then hit the electrical tower with a crackle and crash that brought a grin to Emerald’s face. Everyone from here to midtown would see that cyan light from Rex’s gaudy, distinctive weapon take down the power source for the bank.

_Perfect._

She hit the ground just in time to see Daily be knocked off his feet by a shotgun blast from Mel’s mace. She caught her friend’s hand and pulled him upright. His aura had to be running low, but he shot her a tired smile and raised his fists. Her own head pounded, all those little uses of her Semblance adding up to a serious drain on her aura.

Lavender and Mercury had thirty seconds.

Two against three with their auras depleted, Emerald and Daily probably didn’t have much longer.

 _Hurry,_ she thought, and she sprang back into the fray.

* * *

The air howled in Mercury’s ears as he rocketed downward.

As soon as Orion’s stupid, curly head cleared the roofline, Mercury caught Lavender’s arm and gave her a spin. She revolved so quickly that she blurred, Orion’s eyes widening with panic as she reeled him in like a fish on a hook.

Mercury grinned.

This was what the fucker got for tracking his best friend down like she was some kind of animal. This was what he got for ruining their home.

The second Orion collided with Lavender, she shifted, letting his momentum carry him forward so that he ended up wedged between her and Mercury. The second they had him trapped, Mercury twisted and rammed a foot up into Orion’s jaw, firing _Talaria._ Lavender drove a knife into his shoulder blades, her smile sharp-toothed.

It took less than five seconds of kicking and stabbing and pummeling for blue aura to shatter between them.

_Keerash!_

Five blocks away, the electrical tower exploded.

Thirty seconds.

The roofline of the bank flew past, the big façade up front concealing them from anyone standing in the plaza, and Mercury’s stomach lurched as Lavender’s Semblance reversed directions, halting their descent and positioning them right over the spot on the roof that they’d studied again and again in the photos, making sure it was the right one.

Lavender’s Semblance let go, and all three of them fell. Mercury kept a hold on both of their wrists while Lavender sliced off Orion’s belt with her free hand and shoved it into the duffel bag, arrows and all.

The roof was coming up fast, and Mercury blinked hard, focusing on channeling his Semblance out through all three of them, hoping that he had enough aura left that he wouldn’t just slam into pavement.

Twenty-five.

They flashed through the roof like it wasn’t there and kept falling through the darkness of the bricks. It was a strain, keeping three people phased, but Mercury held strong until the bricks gave way to faint, battery-powered lights.

Solid, he and Lavender hit the metal floor of the vault. Mercury drove a boot into Orion’s face, knocking him unconscious.

Twenty-two.

He’d be an interesting souvenir for the police. If he didn’t run out of air first.

Lavender had the duffel bag open beside a shelf of bills and was sweeping lien into it with her arms.

Nineteen.

Done with one shelf, she moved to the next. Sweep, sweep, sweep.

Mercury bounced on the balls of his feet.

Sixteen seconds.

“We should move,” he said, the thought of the steel walls turning solid around him making his chest go tight.

“One more,” said Lavender. “Bag’s only half full.”

Sweep. Sweep. Sweep. Each motion seemed to take seasons.

Ten seconds.  
  
“Come _on!”_ he barked. If Torchwick was even a little bit off about how much time they had…

“Ready,” said Lavender, slinging the bag over her shoulder and taking his arm.

If he didn’t have enough aura left for this, they’d wind up fused with the bricks halfway up. If the wall’s aura shield raised sooner than they thought, they’d be trapped in here with Orion while the rest of the Golds beat Em and Daily senseless.

Mercury shook his head. Not happening.

Seven seconds.

He fired both greaves into the ground for an extra burst of speed as Lavender’s Semblance pulled them upward. He braced himself as they raced up toward the steel. He activated his Semblance…

…and let out a sigh of relief as they slid right through.

 _We’re not out of the woods yet,_ he reminded himself, focusing all of his energy into his hold on Lavender, into keeping them both phased through the bricks.

A second later, they were flying up into the deep gold sunshine of July. Lavender’s Semblance let go of them, and they landed on their backs on the roof, sprawling next to each other.

“Not bad, Wolfboy,” said Lavender, sitting up while he caught his breath. “That coulda gone a lot worse.”

And then, two blocks away, Emerald screamed.

The sound pierced Mercury’s ribs. Lavender’s eyes went wide, then hardened.

“Let’s go,” she said, and he nodded, and then they were falling again. On the rooftops, the Golds were fighting among themselves, scattering to the winds. He and Lavender swept past them with ease. Her Semblance hurled them over the roofline and into the alley before letting go.

Emerald lay on the ground, aura shattered, both her guns trained on Rex as he advanced with his sword in hand and a grin that made Mercury want to cave his skull in. Daily was crying out, trying to get to her, but Russel and Mel had him pinned down in a corner. Orange aura shattered as Mel’s mace rammed into his shoulder.

Mercury and Lavender exchanged a nod in midair.

Inside, Mercury felt the two halves of himself, the thief’s protector and the murderer’s son, call for blood in unison.

He flipped toward Rex and brought his boot down like a hammer.

* * *

The Argent girls were too spoiled for their own good.

By the time Marcus had reached the basement, Brunnhilde had used her Semblance to dig the better part of an escape tunnel for her sister and the mangy little step-wretch.

Griselda instantly fell several notches in Marcus’s estimation when she hefted her polearm and planted herself between him and her sister. She hadn’t seemed like an idiot before, but love did make people stupid.

He would teach her to be cleverer in the future.

She gritted her teeth, a flashing in her brown eyes telling him that she was gearing up to use her Semblance— _Scarbleed,_ Alyson had called it—which was by all accounts truly unpleasant. Early in his tenure in Vale, Marcus had walked in on a fifteen-year-old Griselda having a screaming match with her mother that ended with Alyson shaking and groveling on the floor.

“My daughter,” she’d said later, sipping her tea with a brittle smile, “can drop people back into their worst memories. Do remember never to cross her.”

That wouldn’t be a problem for Marcus.

He fired a round into the floor, vaulting himself over Griselda’s polearm, then her head. His hand closed around the back of her neck, and she let out a strangled cry.

Her Semblance tasted like blood in the back of his throat.

The girl whirled, disoriented, while her sister cried out. Marcus shot twice, shattering Griselda’s silver aura, and then whipped half of his weapon forward.

The razor wire slashed across one of her wide brown eyes, leaving a bloody gash in its place.

The stupid girl screamed, dropping her weapon and clasping both hands over the place where the eye had been. Blood ran down one side of her face, tears down the other.

That was where love got you. He’d done her a favor.

Griselda staggered around him and fled for the exit her sister’s Semblance had just opened (the first smart thing she’d done all day. Nothing did teach a lesson like pain). A crooked little smile crossed the stepdaughter’s face before she followed.

Right on cue, Brunnhilde’s shield slammed into his back.

Noble of her, struggling to buy time for her sisters.

It would make her much easier to kill.

Brunnhilde was a tall girl, her hair the same shade of brown as her sister’s eyes (well, eye, now), her eyes the same silver as her sister’s hair. She bared her teeth, blocking his path with her shield. Behind her, Cinder and Griselda fled.

She had Huntress training, clearly. She lasted longer than her mother did. It took ninety seconds for Marcus to slip into her blind spot and wind the razor wire around her neck. He gave up Griselda’s Semblance, feeling that bloody sensation flee his throat and run back to its owner, before clamping his hand around Brunnhilde’s shoulder so that she wouldn’t be able to bring the roof of the cellar down on his head. Her Semblance made a solid feeling in his gut.

She screamed, and silver light blazed from her eyes, brightening the basement like a bolt of lightning. Marcus closed his eyes to keep from being blinded.

“Sorry, girly,” he said when he opened them, “but I’m not that kind of monster.”

He drew the wire tight.

When it was over, those silver eyes—nothing like his useless son’s, no matter what Watts said—dimmed forever, Marcus left the cellar the same way Cinder and Griselda had, their escape tunnel spitting him out in the middle of a backstreet.

That little step-wench… there was something intriguing about her. His employer might find a use for her. And as for Griselda… Alyson had been a reliable contact. There might be a use for her daughter as well.

From a pouch on his belt, he drew a pair of many-legged white Grimm grubs. He wrinkled his nose. He wasn’t looking forward to Watts’s “goddess” being his only regular source for jobs. He tossed the grubs to the pavement, and they scurried away, seeking out the girls. A Seer Grimm could home in on the grubs and handle it from there.

Marcus’s work here was done. He had a bullhead to catch.

And then the electrical tower three blocks north of him exploded in a burst of pale blue fire.

He’d heard that the local street rats were getting a little more gung-ho about their turf wars than usual, but this was something else. What were the little shits playing at?

He spent a minute weighing his options. Watts _did_ value punctuality. But Marcus also valued showing that snide Atlesian weasel that he was a man who couldn’t be owned.

He took a swig from his flask and started up the nearest fire escape.

Once he reached the rooftop, he could see a little more in the direction the blue light had come from. He couldn’t make out anything happening on the ground, but just scraping the roofline were the telltale silver flares of air Dust.

That was strange.

The pattern of the trajectories would only make sense if they were being fired from…

Hm.

* * *

Emerald didn’t mean to scream when Rex’s sword tore through the last of her aura. It just happened.

His foot connected with her stomach, and all the breath she might have used for a second outcry deserted her in a rush. Wheezing, she hit the ground hard, barely keeping hold of _Thief’s Respite._

“Not so tough now, are ya?” Rex smiled as he bore down on her, taking his time. She raised her guns.

And then she smiled, too, because she saw something that Rex didn’t: Mercury dropping out of the sky with Lavender beside him and death in his eyes.

“What are you—” Rex said, and then _Talaria_ cracked into the back of his skull. He reeled.

Emerald rolled out of his way only to find Russel advancing on her. His knives were drawn, but his eyes had the same scared look she’d seen when they’d raided her terrace. From the ground, she fired _Thief’s Respite_ into his kneecap. His aura flared and dissolved.

They both froze for a second, his knife raised, her revolver loaded.

She wasn’t going to be the one who blinked first.

“Run,” she growled. And he did. She even managed to sneak out a hand and liberate his wallet as he passed.

He’d go free, she and Daily had decided, as their messenger. He would tell all the other rich kids, all the future Huntsmen, that the streets were off limits. That he’d lost his entire team to them.

As Emerald struggled to her feet, feeling sore and graceless, she tried to get the lay of the land. The low-ranking Golds were starting to cluster around the roof again, mouths falling open as they watched the tide of the fight turn against their bosses.

Daily was slumped against a wall at the back of the alley, catching his breath, while Lavender hacked away at Mel. From the wooden set of her stance, Emerald guessed that he’d stuck her feet to the ground, but that wasn’t stopping her from slicing bullets out of the air and landing jabs to his gut when he tried to get in close with the mace.

And it didn’t stop her from using her Semblance on him. Meleager jolted ten feet into the air without warning, and then a coil of metal fastened itself around his neck. There was a quiet gleam of satisfaction in Daily’s eyes as the cord of his wrist launchers sent Mel’s chin crashing into Lavender’s horns, making him plummet to the ground in a hail of broken red light.

And Rex had Mercury to reckon with.

Emerald couldn’t quite believe that the force ripping through the alley like a tornado was her best friend. There was something about the way he moved that didn’t seem quite human, more like the wing-footed god of his emblem than the boy who had sewn hers for her.

He dealt a flurry of kicks to Rex’s chest, looking like he was running on the wind, and sent the larger boy reeling. His eyes met Emerald’s, and with a smirk, he nodded.

Understanding, Emerald shot a blade of _Thief’s Respite_ so that it struck Rex between the shoulder blades. He turned, his gold eyes burning, but Emerald met them without shivering. She wasn’t the one who needed to be afraid anymore.

Because Mercury was right behind him, dancing on his hands the way he had on their half-birthday, only now silver bursts of air Dust raced from his greaves every time he kicked out.

Rex must have seen Emerald smile, because he turned back around just in time for Mercury to flip away, vaulting off of the walls and leaving a silver cyclone crashing down on Rex’s head. Mercury hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he could do some really amazing violence with that move.

There was only one step left before “Profit.”

“Lav, the bag!” Emerald called out, and Lavender tossed the duffel of cash to her, but not before fishing out Orion’s belt and donning it herself. Daily dealt a palm strike to Mel’s chest and then snatched his mace out of his hands.

As Rex rounded on Mercury, who’d backed himself up into the far corner of the alley, Emerald fired a blade at the crossbar of his sword. It hooked around the blade, and Emerald hit the retraction trigger. Rex snarled over his shoulder and tightened his grip, knowing that without aura she didn’t stand a chance of dragging it out of his hand.

Emerald knew that. She also knew that the chain would pull her towards him so quickly that, aura or no, her blade would hurt like hell when it hit the back of his head. She shot forward like a bullet, drawing back her arm, and swung forward from her shoulder with all her might, her kama making an audible _crack!_ when it connected.

At the same instant, Mercury lunged downward, sweeping a kick and a bullet into Rex’s shins before phasing through him to land by Emerald’s side as she flipped free and raised her kamas.

Any shred of the calm, arrogant demeanor that Rex had worn into the alley was gone. He was staring up at the boys gathered on the roof, rage and desperation contorting his face.

 _“Do_ something!” he shouted.

Not one of his minions moved. They were all the kind of people who only moved for people who had power, and backed up into a corner with Emerald and Mercury ready to spring at him, Rex didn’t look like someone who fell into that category.

He looked like a spoiled rich boy who’d thrown a tantrum only to have the toy he wanted held out of his reach anyway.

Emerald swung _Thief’s Respite_ at his non-sword arm, letting the arc be a little slow. His hand shot out to catch her wrist, but she was ready for him. With her other hand, she slipped the duffel bag of stolen cash into his grip, his fingers closing around the strap.

He cleaved his sword down toward her, but with a _clang_ , _Talaria_ blocked it. Emerald twisted free of the struggle as Mercury grabbed Rex’s arms and _shoved,_ firing _Talaria_ to get more momentum _._

Both of them slammed back into the wall, and then Rex kept going, his arms and back and legs sinking into the bricks as Mercury activated his Semblance. A moment later, Mercury’s hands emerged from the wall, empty, leaving Rex behind. He took a step back, and Emerald joined him.

Mel fled for the end of the alley, and Mercury scowled over his shoulder as he ran.

Rex looked down at himself, at the legs and arms that had fused with the brick, and let out a hoarse cry that would have made Emerald pity him if he were anyone else. The only evidence that he’d ever had hands to begin with was the blade jutting out of the wall to his right and the partially-fused duffel bag hanging out of the bricks to his left, lien bristling out of the mortar like the fronds of a fern.

“What—what did you do to me?”

“I think,” Mercury said, tilting his head to the side and propping a hand on his chin, “that I just turned you into the ugliest public art installation this city has ever seen.” He glanced at Emerald. “You think I can get an award for that?”

“It _is_ very avant-garde,” said Daily, his mild tone forming a stark contrast with his switched-back ear and the white-knuckled grip he had on his stolen mace.

Lavender set a hand on Daily’s shoulder. “I dunno, Wolfboy. I think that mural with the satyrs on Twenty-Fourth could give you a run for your money.”

Mercury glanced over his shoulder again, and Emerald followed his gaze to see Mel growing smaller and smaller as he ran.

“You wanna go after him?” she asked.

“I don’t want any of ‘em walking around.” Mercury’s voice was hard.

“You’ll miss my evil overlord speech,” Emerald wheedled.

“Eh, I’ve heard you rehearse it.” He smiled, then, and clapped a hand onto her shoulder. “You’ve got this.”

She smiled and covered his hand with hers for a second before letting go. “Hurry back.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” And then he was off in a flash.

Emerald turned her eyes to the rooftops. The boys who had, until five minutes ago, been Golds were all looking down at her, wide-eyed, like they were waiting for her to tell them what to do next. With _Thief’s Respite,_ she pointed at Rex, keeping her eyes fixed on the roofline.

“Is this your leader?” she called out.

Silence.

Louder, harsher now. _“Is this your leader?”_

Lavender joined her, knives flashing. _“Is he?”_

“No,” Xan said quietly.

It was easy, after that.

“Is this your leader!” Emerald shouted again, and it wasn’t a question anymore.

 _“No!”_ The skyline echoed back.

“You’re damn right he’s not!” Lavender yelled.

“I’ll kill you!” Rex burst out. “All of you! Little rutting traitors!”  
  
Emerald looked calmly up at the Golds. “You think he’s telling the truth?”

Mutely, they all shook their heads.

“You’re catching on,” she said. “This miserable sack of shit wouldn’t have ended up being a danger to any of us—wouldn’t have gotten any of us under his thumb—if we’d all looked him in the eye first thing and told him to fuck off. You all gave him the power he had.”

She smirked. “And now we’re all going to take it back.”

“In that duffel bag,” she went on, “there’s enough money to make each and every one of us comfortable for the rest of our teens. And I’m gonna let you help yourselves to it, on a couple conditions. Daily?”

Daily stepped forward. “Reparations. Every Faunus kid you hurt on his orders gets half the money you take.”

“And we will _know_ if they don’t.” Lavender’s eyes flashed dangerously.

Emerald nodded. “Second—no more turf. No more wars. People like him—” again, she brandished her revolver at Rex—“will always see us as rats they can train. And we’re not going to let them get away with it anymore. The next time—and there will be a next time—a rich kid tells you he’s going to be your king, you laugh in his face. You laugh, and you say, ‘Good luck.’ Because you’ll remember what happened to the last guy who tried that.”

“They’ll find you!” Rex yelled. “The cops will lock up every last one of you little thugs, my parents will—”

“Boys,” said Emerald to the assembly on the roof, “would you give us a moment and keep an ear out for sirens?”

There was a general nod, and Emerald turned back to Rex. She waved Lavender and Daily back. She needed to do this herself.

“They’ll get you for this,” Rex spat, his eyes going manic. “They’ll lock you away, and you’ll rot, Grimm-Eyes. Our lawyers are good.”

Emerald smirked. “But I think the ones the SDC hires will be even better.”

Rex frowned. “What?”

“For your trial,” said Emerald. “For bank robbery.”

“I didn’t rob a—”

“And yet here you are, holding a bag of stolen cash from the SDC’s vault in one hand, and the weapon that took down the safe’s power source in the other. It looks pretty open-and-shut to me. Oh wait,” Emerald said, as Lavender took a knife and hacked off the blade of the sword. That gold plating alone would be enough to finance their apartment. “ _Part_ of the weapon.

“I can’t imagine what led you to leave one of your accomplices stranded in the vault, but then a delicate little thing like me should have no idea what goes on in the mind of a criminal. And really, your plan should have been foolproof. After you went to all the trouble of hitting the Print Records Building to find out exactly where the Schnees have been keeping their money, I’m amazed you let it all fall apart just because some of your minions turned on you. I guess you’re just a sad little rich boy in over his head.”

“You framed me,” he said, and Emerald savored that moment of dawning understanding.

“Comprehensively.”

“And even if that case falls through,” said Lavender, pulling Cally’s hand from her pocket on its loop of string, “they’re gonna dig through every last corner of your personal life.” She stepped forward, her face hard, and hung the hand around Rex’s neck like a medal.

Like an ID tag.

“And they’ll find a lot of things that will make it impossible to explain _that_ away.” Emerald nodded at the hand.

It took Rex all of half a second to go from shock to fury. “Thieving bitch!”

“Yep,” Emerald smiled. “That’s me.”

“I should have killed you,” he growled, his chest straining forward even as the bricks held him fast. “Back at Copperfield, I should have put my hands around your skinny little throat and squeezed.”

“But you didn’t,” she said, leveling _Thief’s Respite_ at his chin, a strange, furious calm washing over her. She hadn’t practiced this part. “Why would you? I was just a little doll for you to poke and prod and throw around. I was never going to be dangerous,” she said bitterly. “You got everything you ever wanted, and you never had to change. And all the rotten parts of you just got more and more rotten until there was nothing good left.”

A new thought struck her, one that made her hold her head higher.

“No one ever gave me anything. Every good thing—every good _person—_ I have in my life is a godsdamn treasure to me, because I remember how hard I had to fight for them.” She smiled. “All the power you had, other people gave you. And they took it away. But me?” She took a step back and holstered _Thief’s Respite,_ a rising feeling in her chest.

“I made myself who I am. And I had to fight for every good piece of me. For every person who’s loved me. And now no one can take that away. _Especially_ not you.”

Rex didn’t look like a figure with the power to crash into her nightmares anymore—just a sixteen-year-old with spit running down his chin that he wouldn’t be able to wipe away because his arms were now a permanent fixture of the alleyway. Like a magic trick, she’d changed him from one to the other.

She wished Mrs. Copperfield could see her now, the little Grimm-eyed pest standing triumphant over her golden boy.

Sirens sounded in the distance.

Emerald reached into the duffel bag and scooped out a handful of lien. She took the cow pillow off of her back, removed the pillow itself, and stuffed the case full of cash.

“Good-bye, Rex,” she said.

Lavender set a hand on her shoulder as she took a step back, a silent question.

“I’m okay,” Emerald said, and she meant it. She raised her voice to the crowd. “Take what you want, boys! But anyone who takes that hand off his neck is dead!”

They flooded down into the alley, swarming the duffel bag affixed to their helpless former leader.

“Let’s go home,” said Daily, resting his hand on her other arm. and between him and Lavender and Mercury, Emerald was sure that she had a home to go to, even if her terrace was gone.

Lavender’s Semblance pitched them up onto the roof, and they sprinted off toward the rendezvous point, leaving the Golds behind.

* * *

Mercury sped down the backstreets with a grin on his face.

They’d won. They’d really won.

The sight of Emerald standing tall in that alley, free of the nervous hunch in her shoulders, proved it.

Now, if he could just fuse the hand of the bastard who’d shot her to a park bench, this day would go from good to great.

Meleager had made the smart move of scrambling up to the rooftops, and Mercury would’ve followed him if it weren’t for the fact that his Semblance made it easier for him to set ambushes from the ground. The buildings around here were all single-story, so it wasn’t hard for Mercury to see when Mel made the leap from one rooftop to the next.

Mercury watched his quarry land on the broad roof of a convenience store and drew to a halt, waiting. After running in a straight line for the past four blocks, Mel was probably going to try and shake up the pattern soon.

Sure enough, the footsteps grew quieter—he’d hung a left, heading for narrower alleys. Mercury took off like a shot, following the sound. He phased through the corners of a couple of buildings, keeping himself low and out of sight, and came up at the back of a night club.

Mel’s footsteps were pounding across the roof.

The trap was ready to spring.

He bolted straight at the wall of the building, phasing through it at a diagonal. He’d emerge into the side alley ahead of Mel, launch himself upward, and tackle the son of a bitch straight out of the sky.

Mercury dashed across the abandoned dance floor and then phased when he reached the far wall, flashing out into the light with his eyes cast upward. He slowed as Meleager’s footsteps neared the edge of the roof, ready to jump.

Right on time, Mel came leaping over the roofline, arms wheeling in panic.

And then, with a _bang!,_ his head exploded.

Mercury reeled back in shock. His training threw him into a backwards somersault that carried him out of range of the spray of blood and brain.

The second he came up out of the roll, a hand that he knew too well clamped around his right arm.

His throat closed.

Mel’s body hit the ground.

“I sure hope that wasn’t a friend of yours.” There was something unhinged in Marcus’s snarling smile. His fingers dug into Mercury’s arm hard enough to leave bruises even through his aura. That feeling was the only thing that made Mercury sure this wasn’t a nightmare.

“He got what was coming to him,” Mercury said, feeling like his voice was coming from somewhere else. His heart was hammering so fast he was sure it would bloody itself on his ribs, but he stayed still, kept his tone level, years of practice making him neutral and motionless.

Marcus had seen him phase.

Marcus had seen him phase.

Fuck.

“The fuck is this?” Marcus reached down and tore the emblem from Mercury’s hip, lip curling as he stared at it. “Playing Huntsman, are we?”

Mercury set his jaw and stayed silent. His whole mind was fixed on the hand crushing his arm, the hand that now knew it had the power to rip part of his soul away from him just like Marcus had done with his emblem.

Marcus threw down the emblem and ground it under the heel of his boot. “Playtime’s over.”

Mel’s blood was starting to soak into the cracks that splintered the concrete.

“We’re going home, you miserable little shit, and we’re going to have a talk.” The way Marcus spat the word “talk” left Mercury in no doubt that what it actually meant was “thrashing of a lifetime.”

Mercury’s hand tightened into a fist. He would fight. He had to fight. He couldn’t let Marcus drag him away from Emerald again.

Marcus’s voice went calm and cold, his fingers tightening around Mercury’s arm. “And you’re going to come with me without any fuss, or I’m going to rip this sneaky little Semblance of yours right out of you here and now.”

Mercury’s stomach dropped. All his decent dinners. All the comics he’d hidden. Daily's card games and Lavender's jibes.

Emerald.

He’d be locked away from them.

The summer sun felt suddenly cruel, burning away every shadow he might have used to hide.

Like he was eight years old again, he said, “Yes sir.”

Marcus jerked on his arm, and then they were moving, away from Meleager’s tangled corpse, away from the sirens headed for the bank, away from everyone Mercury had ever loved.

He cast a final glance back at the rooftops and spared a thought for Emerald, Emerald who had finally gotten her life straightened out, Emerald who would finally have a home, Emerald who was safe now, for the first time.

 _Don’t find me,_ he thought. He prayed, watching the murderous gleam in his father’s eye.

_Don’t find me, Em._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, Happy (slightly early) New Year everybody! I hope that we all get to leave 2020 behind like it's Rex Aurum in a brick wall and that 2021 treats us better.
> 
> I know that's a rough cliffhanger to leave off on, so I've decided to post the arc finale all in one go next Wednesday, and until then, here are some absolutely gorgeous pieces of art that you should definitely go check out!
> 
> First up, sirenslament made this wonderfully sneaky-looking [fill-in-the-blank illustration](https://silvermasquerade.tumblr.com/post/638454178815049728/mercury-smirked-at-a-piece-of-graffiti-as-they) of Lavender and Daily's graffiti run last chapter.
> 
> Speaking of Lavender and Daily, there's a LOT of great art for them this week!
> 
> The always-awesome catsintei has made [this absolutely badass drawing of Lavender](https://catsintei.tumblr.com/post/638792315240169472/lavender-an-oc-belonging-to-the-fic-loved-by).
> 
> You can find an equally badass Lavender, as well as Lux Katt from the Vytal chapters, [here](https://fruuths.tumblr.com/post/638792448048611328/hi-just-wanna-share-some-drawings-i-did-for-loved) courtesy of the lovely @fruuths on tumblr.
> 
> And last but never ever least, @shooty-booties on tumblr has both [yet more excellent Lav and Daily content](https://shooty-booties.tumblr.com/post/638874920411185153/this-is-another-voluntary-ad-for-the-fic-loved-by) and [two beautiful illustrations](https://shooty-booties.tumblr.com/post/638764805572919296/ive-been-obsessed-with-the-fic-loved-by-almost) of the Maura and Vardan scenes from Arc Two.
> 
> So, go enjoy!
> 
> As always, I'm excited to talk with you guys in the comments (I have some IRL stuff going on that means I probably won't be able to reply to most comments until Sunday, but I'll still see and adore them), and I can't wait for next week :D


	21. Overrun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which truths come to light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Arc finale time! I know it's a bit late this week, but real life has been... a lot, recently. But it's here now, so let's go!
> 
> cw: Child abuse, graphic depictions of violence, metaphysical horror, and the aftermath of all of the above. I've placed the heaviest violence within a single POV section, and I'm putting #s before and after that section so that you can use the Find function to skip over it if you want. You won't miss any plot information if you do.

Emerald climbed up the last few rungs of the fire ladder, her gloves shielding her hands from the scalding metal.

When her head cleared the roofline, she half-expected to see Mercury already there waiting for her with a self-satisfied smile on his face, ready to gloat at Lavender because he was finally the first to reach the rendezvous point.

Lavender was going to get to claim another victory, though, because the roof was empty.

“How long is it gonna take that simple bitch to realize that this city’s laid out on a grid system?” she asked, clearing the ladder and getting to her feet beside Emerald.

“A little longer, I guess,” said Emerald, reaching down a hand to help Daily up the last few steps.

The blue-gold sky was clear and bright, and standing up here, on the rooftop where she and Mercury had first told each other their names, Emerald felt more at peace than she ever had in her life. The city unfolding below her felt like it was _hers_. Her years of careful attention to every corner and alley felt repaid in the golden weight of Rex Aurum’s blade slung over her shoulder.

They’d barely needed any of the money from the vault. Pawning off the weapons of their wealthy enemies would get Emerald and her friends more than enough cash to put a downpayment on an apartment—hell, maybe even _two_ apartments—plus the first few months of rent.

It would definitely be fun to trade in the mace that had nearly killed her to Torchwick and receive, in turn, buckets of cash.

It would be fun to have a warm, well-lit place to go home to every night. And to have Mercury come over and cook dinner. And to buy a shelf and fill it, month by month, with all the books she’d lost to rain and broken glass, plus some new ones she hadn’t yet met. To get a sofa and listen to Mercury’s grumbling as he helped her move it in, and to sit on it with him afterward, reading new books to him and hearing him snicker at all the melodramatic plot points.

Yeah. The life she’d won for herself today sounded pretty good, and it would start the second Mercury came clambering up the fire escape.

Any minute now.

She watched blue police lights flicker and swarm around the downtown bank like so many dragonflies. She wondered how long it would take them to find Orion sealed up in the vault, Rex holding the mostly looted bag two blocks away. Then they’d trace back the trail of breadcrumbs Emerald had left for them—the planted witnesses, the receptionist at the Records Building, Cally’s hand around his neck—and connect the dots with ease, even if the bank did stand solidly within the bounds of the Dumb Cops District.

Daily was starting to fidget with the mace, now. Lavender was pacing.

“He’ll get here soon,” Emerald said, but she didn’t take her eyes off the streets below.

Just a little longer.

Meleager’s aura had been shattered at the end of the fight, his mace wrenched from his hand. He wouldn’t be able to contend with Mercury for more than three seconds, max.

So what was the holdup?

As Emerald watched, some of the blue, dragonfly lights of the police cars broke off from the bank and started moving south, drifting from the right side of her vision to the left and clustering together in a seedy neighborhood six blocks from the bank.

She frowned. That was the direction Mercury had chased Mel.

“Daily?” she said. “Would you mind keeping an eye on my share of the loot while I go check that out?” She nodded at the new clump of police lights.

Daily took the sword and the cow pillow, but his mouth pressed into a line. “That looks like something none of us should go toward on our own.”

“I know,” said Emerald, “but I just have… a feeling, okay? And with all the cops around it, we don’t want to draw attention. I’ve got the most practice with stealth. I’ll be careful. I promise.”

Daily flung his arms around her and hugged her tight. She wondered if he had the same creeping sensation in his stomach that she did. Over his fluffy, trembling ear, she made eye contact with Lavender, who was watching her with a worried look.

Emerald let go of Daily with a whispered, “We’ll be fine,” and hugged Lavender. Lavender stiffened for a second.

It was so strange, to not be used to hugging Lavender anymore, and Lavender clearly had the same feeling, but she hugged back after a moment.

Leaning her head against one of Lavender’s curling horns, Emerald whispered, “If I’m not back by sundown, take Day and the loot and get somewhere safe, okay?”

“Green, that’s not gonna be a—”

“Please.”

Lavender’s hands pressed into her back. “Okay.” She pulled away. “If that bastard just stopped for coffee, I’m gonna have to kill him the second you get him back here, you know that, right?”

Emerald cracked a smile. “I’ll make sure he stands for his execution.”

It would be like Mercury to kick the shit out of an enemy and then go for coffee—or, well, not coffee because it gave him the jitters and he liked hot cocoa a lot more, but he’d sworn Emerald to dire secrecy on that. He’d be sitting in a café smirking and waiting for her and maybe watching the cops tote Meleager away, and she’d give him a scolding that he’d laugh at.

She kept that thought at the front of her mind as she started down the fire escape, using it to hold down the rising fear.

_Where are you, Merc?_

* * *

Marcus threw Mercury over the threshold like he was a piece of refuse. Mercury snarled as he rolled and came up in a crouch. He was going to make sure that Marcus counted letting go of him as a mistake.

He had a decent third of his aura left, he thought, and with his Semblance in the mix, he could run straight out of here.

Marcus seemed to see the thought cross his mind. He drew his weapon from his back. “How far do you think you’ll get?”

Mercury frowned, doubling up his fists and putting his weight on his back foot.

“You’ve seen me track men who have been in deep cover for twenty years across continents, boy. You’ve seen me drive them out and kill them. So, tell me. With a twenty-second head start, how far do you think you’ll get?”

Mercury couldn’t say anything to that. If Marcus wanted to start tracking him, he’d seek out all the kids involved in the street fight first, and he’d carve a bloody swath through them. Any trail he followed would lead him straight to Emerald.

“That’s what I thought.” Marcus smiled, that unhinged look still in his eyes as he parted his weapon into its dual shotgun form, garotte wire trailing. “So you and me are going to find out whether you’ve earned that Semblance. Or whether I’m going to take it from you.

Every nerve in Mercury’s body was screaming at him to run. Each muscle in Marcus’s face set off a long-trained alarm bell, warning piling on warning into a clamor of panic, and something small in Mercury’s head seemed to whisper, _Dad’s never been this mad before._

And it was true. He’d never been caught breaking so many rules. He’d never provoked Marcus with so many reminders that he was a person with a life and not just a lump of clay for him to beat into whatever shape he wanted. And that look in Marcus’s eye told Mercury that the only thought in his father’s mind was of ripping that life away.

Mercury set his jaw.

“I think you know how this is going to go,” Marcus said with that dangerous calm in his voice. “Or you wouldn’t have hidden your Semblance from me like a frightened rat. You wouldn’t have been so scared of having your crutch taken away. Without it—” and Mercury _did not like_ the light that flashed in Marcus’s eyes—“maybe you’ll finally toughen up enough to take a real hit instead of shrinking away like a worm.”

“We’ll see,” said Mercury. Marcus hadn’t fought Mercury with his Semblance before. He didn’t know the ins and outs and secret tricks of it the way he did the rest of Mercury’s fighting style.

If he could win…

Oh gods, if he could win.

He had to try. If he lost now, he lost everything. He squared his shoulders, settled into his stance. He gave himself a split second to do what Maura Ellwood had done before she went to her death against Marcus—to summon up what he was fighting for.

Green hair. Red eyes. A hand catching his.

_This is for you, Em,_ he thought, and then the storm began.

* * *

Emerald raced over the rooftops, fear giving speed to her heels.

The blue lights of the patrol cars had formed a flickering hive around the mouth of an alley a block ahead of her. She grappled herself up to the roof of a three-story motel that cut through the plateau of little one-story buildings to get a safer look.

She ran out to the far end of the motel roof, reaching a corner where it overlooked the alley, and lowered herself onto her stomach to peer over the edge.

What she saw nearly made her throw up.

Meleager Janus lay dead in the middle of the alley, his head a sunburst on the asphalt. Emerald covered her mouth with a hand. The police were laying down tape around the body, waving pedestrians away from the street.

There was no sign of Mercury.

He couldn’t have done this, could he? In the middle of a fight, maybe, if he thought someone he cared about would get hurt, but… Mel had already been running. He hadn’t been a danger to anyone.

But Mercury had looked her square in the eye with a laugh when they were eight and said, “This really is going to be a mercy kill.”

And if he hadn’t done it… who had?

Emerald forced herself to sneak another look, to train her eyes on the gory ruin of Meleager’s head. It had been blown apart entirely with the telltale force of a shotgun. The slim, lightweight rounds Mercury armed himself with wouldn’t have the power to do that kind of damage, she knew that from how long he’d agonized over which caliber of firearm to set into the heels of his greaves when they were thirteen.

She eased back from the edge of the roof with a queasy feeling of relief. Mercury hadn’t done this.

_Wait._ What was that?

About half a block away, caught up by the wind and flung beyond the police cordon, was a familiar scrap of grey cloth.

Emerald retraced her steps, circling around the back of the block and then slipping back toward the streets to stay clear of the police. She perched herself behind the kiosk of an old movie theatre and sought out the fabric that had caught her eye… _there!_

She shot out a blade of _Thief’s Respite,_ swinging the chain down at the last second so that the blade speared through the cloth. With a growing sense of unease, she reeled in her catch.

It was Mercury’s emblem. The fabric at the top of it was ripped and frayed, like it had been torn away by force. A muddy, unfamiliar bootprint obscured the winged shoe that Mercury had spent so many hours stitching, bickering with her in the warm light of her terrace.

She held the emblem spread out between her hands, chewing her lip and squinting at it, waiting for it to give her answers.

The answers arrived slowly, and she didn’t like any of them.

Someone else had been in the alley. They had been armed with a shotgun. They’d killed Meleager, totally unprovoked.

It followed that that same person had been the one to tear off Mercury’s emblem. Not just tear it off, but grind it into the dirt. The third person had been angry with Mercury, then—but they hadn’t killed him. Even though Meleager’s mangled body was a clear proof that the third person had no qualms about taking a human life.

Hmm. The Tabard gang’s headquarters was only a few blocks away, and Mercury had mentioned that they would be more dangerous for him to deal with than Torchwick because his dad came up against them a lot. It might make sense for them to dispose of Mel and then kidnap the son of the Huntsman who’d been menacing them for years.

But that still didn’t explain the emblem. The way it was torn and trampled… it felt personal.

Mercury’s voice rang through her head. _And waste Dad’s training hours on something this showy and dumb?_

Running in on its heels came a second voice, still Mercury’s but a couple of years higher and younger— _between the two of us I’m the only one who has a dad who has a shotgun._

Mercury’s father didn’t like emblems.

Mercury’s father was good with a shotgun.

The door of their house bolted from the outside.

Emerald shoved the emblem into her pocket and made a beeline for the suburbs at a dead sprint, her heart thudding heavy in her chest, not quite knowing what it was afraid of.

* * *

Mercury rolled under the first bullet and came up behind the dining room table. He didn’t want to waste his Semblance on the opening volley. Using it would take a toll on his aura, a smaller one than a bullet by far, but still too big for him to afford.

He was fighting to kill.

It should have felt strange, he thought, ducking a bullet that whined past his ear and shattered the window behind him. He’d expected, when it came down to it, that some small part of him, some young, left-behind fragment, would cower in the face of a world without Dad. But that part was too busy being terrified of Marcus to bother with wanting him alive.

His father’s face looked inhuman in its rage, and Mercury’s whole will was bent on keeping that monster from closing on him.

If Marcus touched him, this was all over.

Which sucked, because Mercury’s fighting style was hard-wired for close range.

It was almost like Marcus had trained his son in a technique that was weak against his Semblance specifically, and Mercury let out a yell of frustration as he dodged the next shot and fired off two rounds from his greaves because was there any part of his life that that bastard hadn’t built from the ground up?

Marcus leapt at him over the table, and Mercury slid under it the other way, using his greaves to launch himself forward and wincing as a bullet pierced the surface of the table and slammed into his aura.

When he rolled to his feet, Marcus was smirking at him, like he’d planned for Mercury to blunder into that shot. Like he knew everything Mercury would do because he was the one who’d taught Mercury to do it. Mercury’s chest beat hard, and his vision tinged red, but he forced himself not to charge. He wasn’t going to let the son of a bitch bait him.

Marcus hadn’t built all of him.

He was made of Emerald, too, and right now, he needed to take a leaf out of her book—keep calm, let Marcus feel like he was winning, figure out a way to trick him.

Okay. Okay. Marcus would be focused on figuring out the limits of his Semblance, finding ways to beat it.

Mercury could work with that.

He backed himself up to the kitchen counter and phased right before Marcus’s next shot could catch him in the chest. The bottle of dish soap exploded behind him.

He let the next shot connect, too, but phased through it again, letting Marcus see that bullets wouldn’t work, watching for that flash of frustration that meant danger. Marcus’s lip curled.

There it was. He was going to try—

Marcus flipped one end of his weapon around and fired it so that the recoil sent it rocketing through the air beside Mercury, trailing razor wire. Lightning ignited all down the line as Marcus sent it slicing toward him, but Mercury was ready. He phased, and with a faint crackling sensation in his chest, the wire swung through harmlessly. The end of the weapon in Marcus’s hand fizzled, the electricity dust shorting out.

_Now_ that’s _how you coast on a Semblance._

As Marcus retracted the other half of the weapon, Mercury plucked it out of the air, activating his Semblance a second time and firing down with both greaves. He flipped toward the wall of the hallway, his Semblance running down the line and making Marcus’s shotgun phase cleanly through his hand.

Marcus snarled and lunged for him, but Mercury was already shooting toward the wall, his boots sweeping through the ceiling, his arms braced and ready for the landing. He flew straight through the wall and heard Marcus’s fist thud against the plaster as he landed in his bedroom. Before Marcus had time to regroup, Mercury shoved his weapon into the wall, fusing it with the wooden uprights so that it would be every bit as trapped and unsalvageable as Rex Aurum.

Mercury doubled up his fists and turned to face the doorway, expecting Marcus to come charging through in a rage. He put his weight on his left foot, ready to fire with his right. After that bullet he’d taken and a use of his Semblance that precise, he probably only had a sliver of aura left, so he’d need to do as much damage as he could.

Nothing happened.

Silence hung in the motionless air around him. The doorway was empty. Mercury fought down the nervous, electric feeling in his stomach and stayed still, listening hard for any sign of what Marcus was doing.

_Keerack!_

The telltale whisper of breaking glass made Mercury flinch and sent a new spike of adrenaline through his chest. He hated that it could do that to him. The silence rang out again.

Mercury waited. The panic in his veins made him want to run, to charge, to phase through a wall and attack, but Marcus knew his style. Marcus would anticipate. Marcus would be waiting. He needed to stay right where he was and wait for Marcus to give himself away.

A minute ticked by. Then another. Ants seemed to be crawling up Mercury’s spine, the bloodbeat in his ears echoing like thunder.

Marcus was toying with him.

Mercury glanced at the window. It would be like Marcus to come crashing through it the second Mercury let his guard down. He slid back a step, then another, barely daring to breathe, until he had backed himself up into the corner between the window and the dining room wall. He’d be right in the blind spot of anyone who came through the window, ready to phase and retreat into the next room if he needed to.

His eyes darted back and forth. Door—window. Window—door.

Nothing.

Locked into his stance, his arms started to shake, and he willed them to be strong even as the shaking overtook his legs, as the fear became a thing too big for his body to contain.

Door—window. Window—door.

_Bang!_

Silver flashed in front of Mercury’s eyes as a blunt force slammed into his side. He whirled to face the wall, his stance going lopsided, his legs weak at the knees, just in time to see the smoking black hole left by the bullet that had broken his aura, and then the whole wall gave way, crushed to pieces.

Mercury reeled back, his right leg springing up unsteadily as Marcus plowed straight through the drywall, white aura coating his hands and chest like a shield while he threw aside the sidearm he must have gotten from the garage.

He spun free of the sorry excuse for a kick that Mercury aimed at his gut, and then his hands closed on Mercury’s arm and dragged him through the hole in the wall, and how was it possible to feel terror and despair at the same time?

Mercury’s back slammed into the other side of the wall and drove the air out of his lungs, and Marcus’s hand clenched around the collar of his jacket and held him still, and there was triumph in his eyes as he drew his hand back, and Mercury barely had time to think _I’m sorry Em_ before Marcus’s palm slammed into his chest.

In nearly sixteen years of rages and beatings and fractured bones, nothing had prepared him for the feeling of part of his soul being torn out by the roots.

* * *

There was panic in the air now, the streets filling with crowds and confusion as the police lights drew gawkers. A police bullhead cruising overhead forced Emerald to drop down into the throng and make her way on the ground.

The stares and exclamations as she elbowed people out of the way fell on blind eyes and deaf ears. Her mind was focused entirely on a drab little house in the suburbs, on the things that might be happening inside of it.

She didn’t know what she expected to find. She only knew that she had to find Mercury before the feeling of Something Is _Wrong_ weighing on her ribs got heavy enough to crush her lungs.

She didn’t stop at intersections. She didn’t take her eyes off of the street ahead of her. She ran. She feared, and she ran.

* * *

#

In Mercury’s nightmares, Marcus stole his Semblance without him knowing.

He would find himself trapped in a place where Emerald would die on the other side of the walls closing in around him if he couldn’t find a way through and then feel a sinking, horrible disappointment as his shoulder collided uselessly with metal.

He’d assumed that the theft itself would go cleanly, quietly, something he wouldn’t notice until it was too late.

He had been wrong.

There was no way to ignore the feeling of Marcus’s Semblance—it was a crowbar hooked under his sternum, twisting and wrenching it out of the way so that its fingers could get at his heart. Like its owner, it was invasive and merciless, delving and tunneling into Mercury’s chest as it tried to get at the fleeting thing at the center of him.

He locked his jaw shut so that he couldn’t scream.

Deep beneath his ribs, a fist seemed to close around something that fluttered and struggled like a trapped bird, and when that unseen hand pulled, a scream tore out of Mercury’s throat and forced his jaw open because his Semblance wasn’t a neatly detachable accessory bolted to the outside of his soul. No. It was part and parcel of it, wired up to his sarcasm and his fondness for hot cocoa and the sight of Emerald under the light of fireworks in the same way that his heart was wired up to his arms and his neck and his lungs.

And when it ripped free with a tearing, spattered sensation, all the hopes and loves and memories that had been tied to it collapsed into disarray inside of him, bleeding out now that their center was gone.

Mercury crumpled in on himself.

Marcus smiled. “Told you.”

And even though he knew he’d lost, even though it would do fuck-all, Mercury cranked back his right arm and threw a wild punch at Marcus’s jaw.

Marcus sighed as he caught the punch. “You still telegraph.” And then a quick, twisting motion of his hand broke Mercury’s ring and little fingers, and the pain that blazed up his nerves and sank in the bloody mire where his heart had just been made him sink to his knees.

After that, it wasn’t over as quickly as it should have been. Mercury wanted it over, so he stayed still as Marcus caught him by the collar and drove his right fist into Mercury’s face until the vision in his left eye went blurry and he tasted blood—as Marcus’s boot made two of his ribs snap—as the jagged edges of a shattered bottle raked bloody trenches across his right shoulder blade.

He stayed still. He kept one promise to himself. He didn’t cry.

When it was over, Marcus tossed him onto the sofa and stormed off to make his excuses to Watts. But not before he laid down some trash bags to keep the blood from messing up the upholstery.

His hands went to Mercury’s greaves, and Mercury didn’t have the strength left to flinch anymore, not even as the last line of defense he’d made for himself was taken from him.

“You clearly haven’t earned these, either.”

And then Mercury was alone, broken and splintered, the stabbing pains in his fingers and his ribs and his head dwarfed by the slow-bleeding void where his Semblance had been. All the walls he’d spent years building brick by brick to keep the conflicting fragments of himself separate and whole lay beaten down by artillery.

All the parts of him that were worth something—all the parts that he’d wanted to give to Emerald—were drowned beneath the blood and pain that he’d spent the past three years trying to hold in check. Even his aura lay sluggish and dead. It didn't stir when he called it, like it was locked up inside of him as completely as it had been when he was tiny, before Marcus had kicked it awake.

His face was turned toward the window, but half-buried in his arm so that only his bad eye could make out the vague glow of sunlight struggling through the slats of the blinds and failing before it reached him.

She was out there, Emerald, somewhere that the light could reach, still carrying around the best parts of him. The parts he’d had to build with her help. The parts that had maybe been lies.

As his eyes fell shut, he told himself he was glad that she’d never see the rest.

* * *

#

Emerald slowed as she reached the suburbs, that feeling of foreboding starting to pull her back instead of driving her forward.

She knew where she was going, but everything else… any information that would help her understand whatever danger she was walking into was hidden beneath those clean white blanks that Mercury had laid over his home life.

And maybe, there was no danger at all.

But Emerald knew better than to trust in that hope.

Her aura was just starting to return. She probably only had enough for one good use of her Semblance. And with those weird, one-way windows and the very real possibility that Mercury’s dad had a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later, that would be a problem.

A few houses down from Mercury’s, Emerald ducked off of the road and started picking her way through the backyards of the homes across the street. They were pristine and empty. No swing sets. No lawn chairs. Just plain wooden fences dividing one from the next. The feeling of dread grew.

She forced it down and vaulted into the backyard of the house across the street from Mercury’s. From around the corner, she scanned the front of his house.

Okay. The garage on the right had no windows. She could get to the door through that blind spot and then… wait for someone to open it?

She didn’t have a better plan, and all the nagging fears and curiosities that she’d been carrying around for the past six years were buzzing through her mind like a swarm of hornets.

She needed to know.

Sticking to the house’s blind spot, Emerald darted across the street. She crept along the front of the garage until the wall turned inward, leading to the front door, then edged around the corner, pressing herself back against the bricks in a tiny spot that was invisible from the windows.

She waited.

After a minute, a man’s raised voice sounded from behind the door. It was muffled, but she made out the word “replacement” and something that sounded sort of like “watch.” Emerald leaned a little closer, the prospect of answers drawing her in.

The door slammed open, missing her nose by an inch, and it was only an ancient reflex that made sure her Semblance activated before whoever had opened it could see her.

Emerald was standing face-to-face with a harsh-jawed, white-haired man who had Mercury’s nose and eyes like ice and that self-assured, triumphant smirk—she would know it anywhere.

But something about that look on a face that wasn’t Mercury’s made her blood run cold.

She found herself shuffling out of his way, stomach turning, even though she knew that those off-white eyes had no power to see her, not with her Semblance up.

She moved quickly, darting past before he could close the door behind him.

In his right hand, Mercury’s father—a man with that smirk could only be Mercury’s father—held something that might once have been a weapon, a gleaming black staff that had two pieces of wood grafted to it in the strange, fusing pattern that Mercury’s Semblance could create. The hand that held the weapon was spattered with blood.

Emerald slipped through the door.

The mingled odors of alcohol and dish soap burned her sinuses.

The door closed behind her.

Her eyes fell onto the sofa, onto the prone, bloodied figure lying there, and understanding split her heart in half.

The deadbolt slammed home.

The bruise around Mercury’s eye when they’d been eight. The limp that had come with it. The way he winced whenever a hand came toward him. The nightmare she’d shaken him out of last month. The fact that he’d never gone to school. The careful distance he’d always placed between Emerald and his father. The weeks he went missing—how he came back to her brittle and angry and so tired he couldn’t stay upright.

All the pieces of the puzzle slid cleanly into place, and the picture they revealed stole any breath that she might have used to cry. Her Semblance gave out.

The side of her best friend’s face that she could see wore a mask of bruises. The arm that that face rested on ended in a purpling, crooked-fingered hand. Three deep gashes ran from his right shoulder to the center of his spine, the grey fabric of his jacket shredded and soaked through with blood.

The sight struck her like lightning, but it froze her in place for only a second, and then she was rushing to his side like iron to a magnet.

“Mercury!” She dropped to her knees beside the couch, near where his head lay. “Merc, what happened?”

He was so still, for a moment, that Emerald was afraid he might be dead. Then his eye, so bruised and swollen she could barely see the grey of it, blinked. All the air went out of her chest.

Mercury gasped, a rattling sound that made Emerald’s heart clench, and cringed away from her, his head startling up off of his arm. His right eye, the only one capable of movement, was wide and uncomprehending.

“Merc,” she whispered again, “what happened?”

She stretched a hand out toward his face only for him to flinch again.

“E-Em.” His voice was hoarse and rasping. He spat blood onto the trash bag under his head before he kept going. “You have to run.”

Emerald shook her head.

He propped himself on his right arm and winced as pressure fell on his broken fingers. His eyes were frantic, brows knitting together. “Em you have to go _now,_ he’ll kill you, Em, he’ll kill you.”

“Merc—”

_“Run!”_ His voice broke on the word.

Emerald caught his left hand where it lay.

“I won’t leave you like this.” She couldn’t stop her voice from wobbling as she tried to cradle his hand with both of her own. It was the only part of him that she was sure she wouldn’t hurt. “Please… please tell me what’s going on.”

Maybe it was a cruel thing to ask him while he was hurt and trembling like this, but she didn’t understand, she _needed_ to understand.

Mercury pressed his mouth into a line, squeezed his good eye shut.

“Can’t be here,” he whispered. “Can’t be here can’t be here can’t be here.”

What kind of Huntsman would do this to his son? How could you claim to protect life and then do this to a person you made, a person you were supposed to love?

She found herself saying it aloud. “What kind of Huntsman—?”

Mercury cut her off with a laugh that sounded more like a sob. “‘Assassin,’ Em.”

And Emerald remembered the split second that his eyes had gone wide in the light of their propane stove, and she knew what his next words would be before he said them. Emerald’s hands tightened around his, and her breath caught in her throat as the blank beside her best friend’s name finally filled itself in.

“My father,” he said, and he seemed to choke on the laugh, “is Marcus Black.”

Every low-level Tabard Emerald had spoken with had whispered that name like it was a curse. The stingy, straitlaced, gently paranoid Huntsman that Mercury had set up in that name’s place withered into mist like the illusion it was, a spell of seven years unraveling in an instant. Every knick-knack, every tea cake, every sneaky modification to _Talaria,_ Mercury had made with a monster breathing down the back of his neck.

By the time he was eight years old, he’d had to be able to move like lightning.

But that meant that when Mercury went missing—the Huntress he’d seen die—

“Then your missions…?” She didn’t know how to finish the question.

Mercury stared down at his hand in hers, then wrenched it free without looking up and balled it into a fist. “I was never good, Em. I could never stop him.”

He kept talking, staring downwards, like he’d half-forgotten she was there. “Should’ve stayed away when we were twelve, but I was too weak, I was too weak, you didn’t deserve—I thought I could stop him. I tried to stop him, but he took it, Em, he took it.”

His breathing was shallow now, and way, way too fast.

“Took what, Merc?”

“He’ll kill you, I couldn’t stop him, the dog—”

“What dog?” Emerald had an uneasy feeling that while she was here, rooted to the living room carpet, Mercury had come untethered somehow and was floating in a whirling darkness beyond her reach.

“I was never good. I thought I was strong, but he took it.” Mercury’s head sank down onto his arm. Over and over again, he whispered, “He took it,” like a broken record.

Emerald sat back on her heels and swallowed down tears. She had to do something. She could get the answers she needed once she got him out of here, but he looked too hurt to move. That was something she could fix.

She forced herself to breathe, to sit up higher on her knees and take a closer look at the gashes on Mercury’s back. They didn’t look life-threatening, but they were deep, running black with blood, and a few chipped pieces of amber-colored glass embedded in the widest cut told Emerald that they had been carved out by the jagged points of a broken liquor bottle.

It took all the self-control in her entire being not to scream.

How had she never realized what was happening to him? All the years they’d been friends, he’d suffered like this, alone, and that made her furious—at herself for missing the signs that had passed before her eyes, at Mercury for keeping her in the dark where she couldn’t help him, at his father for turning a sharp edge loose on the body of the boy she loved.

She _loved._

All the lonely days she’d spent thinking that he didn’t really care for her, that she was a burden that dragged him from a warm, safe home, had been lies.

They’d only ever had each other.

Every day he’d spent saving her was also a day she’d spent saving him, and she would do it again. As long as it took.

She found her voice. She would start with something easy. “Mercury?” She set a hand on his good shoulder, pressed it down gently until his breathing slowed a little and the frantic muttering stopped. “Where do you keep the bandages? I’m not leaving until you’re patched up, so you might as well help me.”

He looked up at her, eyes a little clearer. “My bedroom. First on the left. There’s a box.”

“Okay,” she said, smoothing her hand down his shoulder once, twice. “I’m going to get it. I’ll be right back, okay?”

Mercury nodded, and Emerald stood up, a part of her screaming in protest at the thought of leaving him alone even for a second.

The house was a wasteland. Bullet holes pierced the surface of the dining table to her left, and one of the windows beyond it had shattered. Past the counter to Emerald’s right, whiskey and dish soap had pooled on the kitchen’s linoleum, their containers shattered by the fight Mercury must have had with his father.

Punched into the wall beside the dining room table was a rough-edged hole taller than Emerald was, insulation and sawdust strewn across the floor around it. It was, Emerald realized with a shiver, just about Mercury-sized.

What the hell had happened? Marcus had found Mercury after the job and dragged him back here, but how? Wouldn’t Mercury’s Semblance have let him run? And what did Mercury mean by “He took it?”

Emerald ducked into the shadows of the hallway and walked through the first doorway on the left. The door itself leaned against the far wall gathering dust, like it had been struck from its hinges a long time ago. A threadbare mattress and a rumpled old pillow were shoved against the wall beside her feet. The walls themselves were grey and bare save for the holes that shotgun shells had left in them.

Nothing in this spare, lonely room felt like it was Mercury’s.

This was the home she’d envied. She wanted to run back in time and slap her eight-year-old self in the face, even though she’d had no way of knowing the truth.

Emerald found, by the window, the plastic box of first-aid supplies. How many times, in the years she’d known him, had Mercury used it to patch himself up, to hide the bruises and mend the cuts so she wouldn’t see them? How many times had he knelt in front of this box and tried to build a woundless, smiling version of himself using cheap gauze and fingers that trembled with pain?

Never again, she told herself, and she started back to the living room.

Mercury seemed to have revived a little when she returned. The nervous look on his face was familiar, unlike the vacant stare that had frightened her, and he wasn’t whispering or hyperventilating anymore.

“You don’t have much time here,” he said, slowly, like speaking clearly was a struggle. “He went to drop his weapon off at his boss’s chop shop and tell them the specs for a new one. A half hour, tops.”

“We can make it,” Emerald said, even though she didn’t know if that was true. Having an assassin on their tails… that would be new.

Mercury frowned. “You need to run. I—I can’t.”

And Emerald decided that she could have that fight after she stopped the bleeding. “You helped me so much today,” she said, letting her hand rest on his shoulder again. “Will you let me pay it back some?”

“Do I look like I can stop you?” he grumbled. She didn’t notice until that moment that his greaves were gone, too.

“Not really,” she admitted. “But—if you tell me to stop, I will.” She moved her hand down to the hem of his shirt, slowly enough that he could tell what she was doing. His shoulders went tight as she started pulling it upward. She stopped.

“I’ll put it right back on,” she said. “I promise. I just—I need to see what I’m doing.”

Mercury was still for a moment before he nodded. Getting his shirt off was tricky—the fabric had started to stick to his wounds, and he winced when he had to shift his arms so that she could pull it up over his head, but Emerald managed it, with a vague feeling of seasickness because maybe, just maybe, a time or two, she had let herself daydream about what it might be like to pull Mercury’s shirt over his head, the way it would ruffle his hair, the way his arms might come right back down to curve around her waist—but not like this. Never like this.

There were so many scars.

Lots of them were old, barely visible but intersecting like cobwebs. So old that he must have been a little kid when he’d gotten them, that he must have already been carrying them around on his back the day he’d blundered into her heist when they were eight. She didn’t mean to let out a gasp when she saw his left shoulder, the livid, honeycomb pattern of faded cigar burns, but she did.

Mercury pressed his eyes shut again, face twisting like the sound had pained him, and Emerald forced down the desire to scream that was beating in place of her heart.

Without his shirt covering them, the slashes on his back looked even worse, and now she could see a black thundercloud of a bruise over his left side. The ribs under it must be broken, making his voice rasp and his breathing rattle.

The scream crawled up into her throat, and she barely managed to hold it there, for Merc, as she tore her eyes away from what had been done to him and reached into the medkit, fumbling for tools that felt far, far too small to repair the damage she’d seen. She came up with a pair of tweezers and set an arm over Mercury’s shoulders to steady both of them while she drew the jagged chunks of glass out of the cuts so his aura could heal them cleanly.

“You can cuss me out if you want,” she whispered, both of them wincing as she tugged the first shard free. Swearing a blue streak at Mercury had been the only thing that had kept her mind from shattering as he dug Meleager’s bullet out of her gut.

Mercury shook his head. “Just—just get it done.”

Emerald nodded. She kept her fingers from shaking, and she got it done. After that first wince, Mercury was totally still, totally silent, in a way that felt practiced. Even when she cleaned the cuts out with peroxide, he didn’t let out more than a quiet, _“Ngh.”_

She had never imagined that someone as bright and quick and obnoxious as Mercury could be so good at keeping quiet.

It terrified her.

She bandaged the cuts as well as she could, making kind of a mess of the medical tape at the edges. Mercury had been the group’s resident expert on field medicine.

And now, Emerald knew why, and the reason made her taste bile.

“Do you think you can sit up?” she asked. “I think the rest’ll be easier if I can get you upright.”

Mercury started to lever himself up on his left arm only to collapse with a hiss of pain, fingers racing to his broken ribs.

_“Godsdamnit!”_ he shouted, and Emerald had never heard him sound so angry. She flinched back for a moment, but then…

Three hours ago, he’d been strong and free and untouchably fast, wheeling through the air like a force of nature. Now he was so stiff and bruised couldn’t sit upright.

And then Emerald was angry, too.

“We’re gonna get that bastard,” she said. “But lemme help you up first.”

Mercury opened his mouth like he was going to say something but then closed it and nodded. Emerald set one hand on his shoulder and another above his hip, careful to steer clear of the bruise over his ribs. He was still shivering, even though his skin burned under her hands like he had a fever.

She rolled him up onto his right side, gave him a second to bend his legs, and then slowly tilted him upright. His head was bowed, his shoulders slumped into her hands. His bangs fell over his face and hid his expression from her.

“Can you raise your arms?” Emerald asked, reaching for his shirt.

“Sure.” Mercury’s voice was flat and indifferent, but he did what she asked. She pulled it back down over his head, trying to be careful with his broken fingers, with the wrappings on his arms that she was now sure were there to hide more scars. The second his shirt was in place again, Mercury hunched back into it, crossing his arms tightly over his chest, like he was ashamed of what was under the fabric. The fingers of his good hand fumbled and tugged at the zipper, but it was stuck. He cursed under his breath.

“I got it,” Emerald whispered, and she gently brushed his hand aside, zipped the jacket up to his chin. Her fingers were under his jaw, then, her face close enough to his that she could peer under his bangs and see his eyes. They were damp, and his face seemed locked into place by the effort it took to hold back the tears.

Her own eyes stung, her throat tightening in sympathy. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Mercury swallowed and shook his head. “My Semblance, Em.” His good hand took her wrist, dragged her hand away from his face. “You asked what he took. It was my Semblance. It’s—it’s gone.”

Emerald blinked. “That’s impossible, isn’t it? Merc, that’s your soul, he couldn’t just—”

“I know how my own dad’s Semblance works.” His voice went hard. “He—he takes everything good about people. Dunno why I thought I could—” he cut himself off, jaw working. “I thought I could keep it from him. And now—now I can’t even feel my aura, everything’s shut off, there’s nothing—"

He gritted his teeth and didn’t say anything more.

Before he could start drifting again, Emerald spoke. “We need to splint your fingers before they heal crooked.”

“I usually just grab a butter knife for that,” said Mercury, completely matter-of-fact.

“‘Usually,’” Emerald echoed the word, all the horror it implied unfolding inside of her.

Mercury looked away. “Yeah.”

Emerald stood up too fast and staggered toward the kitchen so that he wouldn’t see her cry.

She didn’t want to be another thing that made him feel weak.

She had to tiptoe around the slow-spreading puddle of whiskey and soap so that she wouldn’t leave footprints. It seemed impossible that this noxious-smelling room was where Mercury cooked their birthday cakes every year, that these were the same walls that had nearly been ruined by his failed frosting experiments. Tears rolled down Emerald’s face, and she scrubbed them away with the heel of her hand.

If Mercury’s Semblance was gone… what did that mean? The swell of grief she felt for the easy smirk he wore when he came sauntering through a wall unexpectedly nearly took her knees out from under her. And his Semblance must have been his only way of getting past that deadbolt on the door. With it gone…

If she hadn’t come to find him, she’d never have seen him again.

She yanked a drawer open in a rattling of silverware, snapping herself out of it. She _had_ come to find Mercury, and he needed her help. She pulled out a butter knife and, on her way back past the freezer, she liberated a bag of frozen peas to use as an ice pack for Mercury’s face.

If the rusty stains on the outside of the packaging were anything to go by, it had been used for that purpose before.

With her makeshift supplies in hand, Emerald picked her way back to the sofa and sat down beside Mercury, shoving the trash bags onto the floor.

“You should know,” he said, turning toward her a little, still looking down. “Since you’re here, you should know. I—you shouldn’t be here, but—but you are.”

Emerald realized that that was the closest thing to a “Thank you” Mercury was capable of mustering.

“Most of the things I told you, they were true,” he said, and then his voice turned bitter. “My father really did train me every day. He really did want to make sure I’d grow up to be just like him.” He face twisted. “Maybe he still will.”

“Merc, _no—”_

“That time we were nine and I hit you? I was trying to train you the way he’s always trained me. Because pain makes you stronger, he says, and I wanted you to be strong, but I couldn’t—Em, I almost broke your jaw. And—and when we were twelve, the day you robbed the mall—the night before he said—he said a lot of things. He said I should kill you.”

Emerald covered her mouth with a hand, remembering that day, the way he’d snapped and run early, the fear that had seemed to crackle under the anger. Marcus Black had known she was alive. Marcus Black had wanted her dead.

And she had never known.

“Why—why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice was ragged with sorrow and frustration.

_Why? I would have helped you, I would have taken you away from here, I would have shoved the sharp end of my pick into that evil bastard’s eye, why wouldn’t you let me?  
_

“Because you’d get yourself killed,” Mercury said. He breathed out hard through his nose, like he was trying to laugh but couldn’t. “And then I’d’ve been really screwed.” Emerald’s heart sank as he looked down at his knees.

“So I didn’t tell you. And I killed a dog instead.” His mouth twisted. “Wasn’t the first time he made me kill a dog. And then I left you. So he couldn’t take you from me. Because—because you’re everything he hates, Em. You lean on your Semblance, and you trust people too fast, and you cry when you’re sad, and—and that’s why I need…” He shook his head.

“But then I got my Semblance.” The smile on his face was ghostly, a dead thing flickering out of the past. “And he couldn’t keep me anymore. And I thought I could be—I could be more than him.” The smile died. “I should’ve known better.”

Before she could say anything—and gods, there was so, _so_ much she wanted to say, but she didn’t know how to say any of it without crying—he held his hands out to her.

“Here,” he said.

Emerald reached out and took his right hand gingerly. The black wool glove that had always been there, nestled between her hands and Mercury’s, seemed sinister now. She peeled it back carefully, trying and failing to keep from touching his two broken fingers.

Snaking around his palm was a winding trench of pink scar tissue, deep enough that it made a small divot on either side of his hand. With a slowly growing horror, she pulled the glove from his left hand to find a looping, identical scar. Her fingers traced it, trying to fathom what her mind didn’t want to.

“When?” she whispered.

“A month or two before we moved,” he said.

“You were eight,” Emerald found herself saying, almost growling, the rage and sorrow too much to contain. She made herself breathe, reached for the butter knife.

Mercury winced as she aligned the metal with his hand, started nudging the bones of his fingers back into place. Emerald bit the inside of her cheek and kept her hands steady.

“I was using my fists too much during my training. I’ve never stopped telegraphing with my right, when I… when I get scared.” His voice went thin.

Emerald started wrapping the bandage around his fingers to set them, and she wouldn’t shake, she _wouldn’t._

_How long have you been this scared?_

“You know I actually held my hands out for him to do it? He told me—he told me to hold them out, and I did because he was Dad, and I let him wrap the wire around them.” His voice shriveled away to a whisper. “I was so stupid.”

“You were a kid,” Emerald said, tears starting in her eyes again as she thought of the snarling, feral little boy who’d knocked a cashier unconscious with his boots to help a thieving, hungry girl he’d never spoken to.

Once she’d splinted his fingers, she kept his hand in hers, slid closer to him until their knees brushed.

“You never deserved this.”

And Mercury’s smile in that moment was the saddest thing she’d ever seen. “I never deserved _you,_ Emerald.”

Emerald thought, then, of every time she’d ever looked at Mercury, at his knowing smirk, at his lightning-like kicks and his rare, ridiculous laugh, and had lost all the air in her lungs because _she couldn’t possibly deserve him._

Without him, she’d have no Lavender or Daily. She’d never have struck out to build her home in the terrace. She’d never have known she wanted to be a Huntress.

She’d never have had a best friend.

“Bullshit,” she said. “You deserve the fucking world, you know that? And I’m going to _fight_ until you can have it, okay?”

Mercury looked away, hiding the bruised side of his face. “I’m not worth that.”

It was the exact same way that he’d turned his face away from her when he’d first shown up to their rendezvous point with a black eye when they were eight. That day, when she’d hiked his arm up over her shoulder—it was probably the first time anyone had been careful with him.

And all over again, she felt the dawning, starburst epiphany she’d had when she was nine years old with Mercury’s head resting on her shoulder, that she was his partner, that they needed each other. The feeling burned and ached now, but the fondness that drove it was whole and unchanged.

And like before, it screamed to be shared.

Slowly, Emerald stretched out her hand, stopping an inch from Mercury’s face. When he didn’t flinch, she kept going, gently skimming her fingertips over his cheekbone and then fitting her hand to the unbruised side of his face. It felt right, there.

In the softest voice she had left, she said, “Can I tell you something I thought once when we were nine? Something I’ve never stopped thinking?”

Mercury turned back towards her, the hardened look in his eyes starting to crack. He nodded. Emerald reached out and slid her hand up into his hair on that side, framing his face as well as she could without touching the bruises.

What she was about to say, she wanted to say to both sides of him—to the proud, sharp-boned, unbruised side that he’d shown her every day and to the side so swollen and wounded that she could barely make out the face under it, the side that he had kept turned away.

She met his eyes, the silver-grey of them still bright after everything.

“Mercury Black,” she said. “I would steal a piece of the moon for you. No—I would steal the whole damn thing.”

* * *

Mercury had told himself that he was going to be strong.

No matter how many times Marcus’s fist made the world ring with noise and pain, he’d never broken. Never cried. Not when his ribs snapped. Not when his Semblance came tearing out of him.

But the second Emerald had come spinning through the door, he’d wanted to crawl and hide somewhere dark where she wouldn’t find him because everything about the sight of her standing in the doorway that belonged to Marcus Black was a screamed warning. Marcus could come back and find her and kill her, and she needed to _run,_ and under all of it, a quiet, broken voice whispered, _She’s not supposed to see me like this._

Because he was sure, once she saw how ruined he was, that she would run, that she would finally understand that he had never been strong enough to protect her the way she needed.

And then she’d stayed, and he’d thought that made some sense. Emerald cared about people. No matter how disgusted she was, she wouldn’t leave without making at least a little good-faith effort before throwing up her hands in despair.

And then she’d held his hands so carefully. Then she’d taken his face in her hands like it was something precious, and her fingers felt _good_ in his hair, against his cheek, even though nothing should have felt good anymore, even though he’d failed her.

Emerald still loved him.

He gave in, tilting his face into her hand, wishing he could vanish into her. Her red eyes were bright with tears, and her ponytail fell, gleaming, over her shoulder, and he felt like he would die if he didn’t pay this back.

So his broken hand stuttered up from where it lay on the couch and came to rest on her shoulder, the fingers that could still bend threading themselves into her hair. His eyes hurt, and his vision blurred, blending her pretty, jade-colored locs with his splinted, ruined fingers, and that was when he realized he was crying.

Because Emerald still loved him. Because he loved her so much that he thought it might break his chest.

And because that love meant fuck-all in the face of Marcus Black.

The world didn’t care that they needed each other. It didn’t care that he wanted time to stop so that even if he had to keep the pain in his head and his fingers and his chest, he would still get to keep Emerald, too.

This wasn’t like the fairy tales Emerald had read him in the sunlight when they were small. Love didn’t turn you back from a broken thing into a person. It didn’t sweep over kingdoms like a tidal wave, burning out the darkness and replacing it with life.

It was just a feeling, trapped under his ribs, tied under hers, and it was eating him alive.

His shoulders shook, and he let out a sob, the pain he’d been hiding from her breaking out of him by force. His chest heaved, and he struggled to breathe, his ribs stabbing.

“Oh—oh gods, I’m sorry.” Emerald’s eyes had gone wide with alarm. Her right hand started to stir away from his hair. “I shouldn’t have—”

Before he knew what he was doing, he’d caught her hand, shifted it back into place, held it there.

“Don’t—” he managed to choke out. “Don’t.” And then the sobs took over, and his voice was gone, and he never wanted her to stop holding him like this, but she would have to, soon, and the world would be sharp and bloody again, and she wouldn’t be here ever again, to spin him an illusion, to make the world look kinder.

The sobs doubled him over, sending knife-edged pangs through his broken ribs and making his head fall onto her shoulder.

“I’ve got you,” Emerald whispered, one of her hands sliding down from his face, her arm curling around his back to hold him closer. The other rested on the back of his head, keeping it secure in the crook of her shoulder. “I’ve got you.”

And there, hunched into his best friend’s arms, his walls in shambles, he let himself go.

He wasn’t sure how long he cried for, shaking and silent, making a mess of the collar of Emerald’s jacket and latching an arm around her waist. He just knew that her hands were there, in his hair, on his back, keeping him anchored. Her mouth was beside his ear, murmuring words that he was too gone to understand but that he clung to anyway.

Then, as tears kept running down his face and Emerald’s neck, as he let all the filth he’d kept walled up inside spill out in sobs, something strange happened. He felt, he thought, a breeze through the mountain pines, the sharp clean smell of it, and that feeling rolled slowly up his arms to his chest before moving inside of him somehow, gliding toward the bloody wreck under his sternum where his Semblance had been.

Mercury opened his eyes to see Emerald glowing, the pale green light of her aura making her shine like the gem she was named for, and he understood, then. She was the wind through the trees. She was trying to bring back the center of him.

He tightened his arm around her and decided he wouldn’t stop her from trying.

Her aura twined between his ribs, branching softly inward, moving only where it didn’t hurt. It wasn’t like Marcus’s Semblance, a crowbar and a set of jaws. It felt cool as mint, and it was as subtle and careful and gently prodding as the girl it belonged to.

He winced when it hit the outskirts of the damage, the debris that had caved into the place where his Semblance had been—his knife crossing the dog’s throat, Maura Elwood dead at the floor of a ravine, Emerald sobbing and desolate because his words had left her that way. Some little, desperate thing inside of him tried to throw up another wall because these were the parts that were beyond love, the parts that Marcus had ruined. The strain of the effort made him grit his teeth, shoulders going tight.

Emerald just stroked his hair, her aura waiting outside the wall, which cracked a little more with each passing second.

“The whole damn thing,” she repeated, and Mercury exhaled in a rush as the wall came down and her aura kept moving, strands of it splitting off and trying to set the most jagged breaks in order.

She reached the empty chamber where his Semblance had been, where the silver-steel feeling of _I will get up again_ that fueled his aura lay huddled in a ball, too frightened to move. The cool, pine-wind sensation of Emerald’s aura coiled around it slowly, pulling back whenever it lashed out in fear, until it had entirely enveloped the small, wounded husk that was all that was left of Mercury’s aura.

The horrible, yawning emptiness in his chest lessened as the silver thing, safe in the cool and lightness of Emerald’s aura, got up the courage to stretch its legs, to roll its shoulders back into place.

He hadn’t had his Semblance when he’d taken down the kidnappers to save Emerald, or when he’d finally been brave enough to snarl in his father’s face on the mountain path outside of Midvale.

Something, deep inside of him, was still quicksilver.

He opened his eyes. The pine-wind feeling vanished, replaced by the faint itch of his aura going to work on his fingers, his ribs. He sat back to see Emerald, no longer glowing with that otherworldly light. Just Em. His Em.

Losing her would be the hardest.

That determined look that he hadn’t meant to love this much crossed her face. “Now, let’s get you out of here.”

It took every shred of strength left in Mercury’s shattered frame to say, _“No.”_

Emerald’s eyes went wide before sharpening into a frown. “Mercury, I’m not leaving you here with that _monster._ I don’t care if you don’t think you’re worth it. I do.”

Mercury shook his head, scrubbed the tears from his face. “We wouldn’t make it a mile, not with me like this and your aura burned out.”

“We’ll figure something out,” she said. “We’ll move fast, get back to Lav and Daily and—”

“Twenty minutes,” Mercury cut her off, frustration rising. “Do you think that’s enough of a head start between us and the most dangerous assassin on the planet?”

“We can find a way to hide,” she said. “Until I recharge my aura, and then I can use my Semblance to—”

“Have you not been _fucking_ listening?” he snapped, the fear too much for him to bear calmly. “He’ll steal it. Illusionists are his specialty. He roots out people like you who think they’re safe, and he kills them.”

_“If_ he catches up with us—”

_“No, Em!”_ he burst out. _“This_ is what happens _when_ he catches us, okay? He takes out my legs while my aura’s gone to keep me still. It takes two seconds. You throw some illusions in his face. It takes him maybe five to figure out where the bullets are coming from, grab you, and take your Semblance.”

Emerald’s pupils shrank to pinpricks. She was scared.

Good. She needed to be.

“And then, Em, _then,_ I have to watch while he kills you.” He had to squeeze his eyes shut at the thought of the clever, quick-moving hand behind his head being savaged to shreds by garotte wire, of a boot breaking the stubborn, pretty face that had always lit up at the sight of him. “And he makes it hurt as much as he can because he knows you’re important to me. Because he found you with me, and that means he can use you to hurt me, and he _will._ ”

He was breathing hard now, the pain in his ribs goading him on. “Everything I’ve done for the past seven years, I’ve done to keep that murderous sack of shit away from you. Everything. And if we run now, it’ll be for _nothing_ because he’ll find us, and he’ll break you into pieces in front of me just like he does with everything _I love!”_

He didn’t know when he’d started shouting. Emerald had clasped her hands in front of herself, her mouth half-open in horror.

And Mercury ground his teeth together and went silent, because if there was a worse way to say _love_ to Emerald for the first time, he sure couldn’t think of one.

When he trusted himself to speak again, his voice was quieter. “Emerald, please… before he comes back. Go.”

“It’s not fair.” A tear ran down her cheek, and Mercury’s hand raced up to brush it away before he could stop himself, his thumb running over the scar that glass had carved into her cheek. She’d been hurt enough.

She didn’t deserve any more scars. Not over him.

“It’s not,” he said. He knew that. If the world was fair, Em would have parents who loved her and cooked her waffles every morning. If the world was fair, they could’ve grown up climbing trees together and getting into little neighborhood scuffles while Fenri followed them everywhere to make sure they were safe.

But the world wasn’t fucking fair.

Emerald’s eyes blazed. “I’ll come back. I will. I’ll get strong and I’ll come back and find you and I will put that son of a bitch in the ground.”

Mercury tried to smirk, but the left side of his face was too battered to manage it. “Hey, that’s a pretty fucked-up thing to call your best friend’s grandma.”

Emerald stared at him with an incredulous look, shaking her head slightly. “I… I love you so godsdamn much.” A line formed between her eyebrows. “I _will_ find you. I don’t care how long it takes.”

And the girl who had, at nine, screamed in the face of a fully trained Huntsman and, at fifteen, plotted a flawless revenge heist shone bright in that moment. In that moment, he believed she could do it.

Maybe...

If he let her believe there was a way to come back, he could get her out of here before Marcus could kill her.

Yes. That was why he said what he said next.

Not because he hoped she would use it.

"The doors have long-range scroll locks," he found himself saying. "I'm pretty sure. If they open without Marcus scanning them if a window breaks, his scroll tells him. Right away. But not much is bulletproof."

He wobbled to his feet and stuck out a hand that was bare and ungloved and finally honest.

Emerald took it just like she always had and stood. She kept his arm wrapped in hers as they walked slowly to the shattered dining room window, Mercury wincing every time he put weight on his left foot. They paused together, in front of the jagged pane of glass that would let her back out into her world and leave Mercury sealed in his.

Mercury let go of her arm and nodded toward the window. Emerald nodded too, her hands shaking.

He had to fight down the feeling, as she clambered over the sill, that he was losing the center of himself again, just as completely as he had when Marcus had taken his Semblance. He stumbled over to the window, drawn by the line under his ribs.

Emerald turned to face him from her side of the window.

“Please,” she said, “please wait for me. I’ll come. I’ll come back soon. Don’t—” she drew in a shaky breath—“don’t let that bastard make you forget who you are. You’re strong. And you’re funny. And you’re _good._ You’re my best friend, Merc. You're worth it.”

Mercury’s eyes stung again, and she would be gone in a second, gone, gone, gone, and if he saw her again, Marcus would kill her.

He tried to give her the words he’d always been able to give her. “Wh—whatever you… say…”

But they broke in his throat.

“I know,” said Emerald, and reaching up, she took his face in her hands again. He let her tilt it downward. Standing on tiptoe, she pressed a kiss to his forehead, held it there, like she wanted it to stick. In a whisper, so close the words ruffled his hair, she said it again. “I know.”

She dropped back onto her feet. Her hands fled his face.

In a whirl of sunlight on green, she spun on her heel and was gone.

* * *

Emerald made it five blocks, back to the very edge of the suburbs, before she broke down completely.

She stumbled into the backyard of a house with a For Sale sign out front and collapsed against the siding, hugging herself as she sank to the ground in tears.

Childhood was over. Mercury’s father had murdered it.

She knelt there in the manicured grass, curling in on herself, feeling weak and useless and so fucking _naïve._ She should have known earlier. She should have saved Mercury before his father could take his Semblance. She should have peeled away his gloves and taken his hands in hers and run and run and run and never looked back.

His blood clung to her gloves. His tears were still drying on her neck.

She cried and cried and tore at the grass until her grief was smaller than her rage. For years— _years—_ a monster had been pulling her best friend apart, dragging him away from her when they could have been happy together, a hundred times over, if it weren’t for that bloodthirsty shadow.

Emerald looked up at the lowering brand of the summer sun as it dipped behind the skyscrapers and screamed like she wanted to shatter it to pieces, to make a second moon of it with her voice alone.

Breathing heavy, she slid back up the wall and squared her shoulders.

She’d done the impossible before. Just this afternoon, even.

“Pain makes you strong, huh,” she said to the air, eyes narrowing.

Emerald had never been in more pain in her life, and the feeling crackled through her veins like fire, and there in the blood orange sunset, she made a promise to herself. To Mercury.

One day soon, she would walk out of that house again.

With her head held high, and Marcus Black’s blood on her hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Over six months ago, around the end of June, within a couple of days of me first having the thought, "Hey, what would happen if Emerald and Mercury met as kids?" this chapter broke into my head more or less fully formed. And it refused to leave. "But this is horrible!" I thought. "How did they get into this? How do I get them out of this?"
> 
> And the answer to both of those questions turned out to be, "fanfiction." Four days later I was writing the first sentence of "Greenie Meets the Wolfboy." So, congratulations, Upsetting Em Finds Merc Scene, you have been written and inflicted on the public and have, in the process, caused me to listen to "Foreigner's God" by Hozier so many times that I'm pretty sure the Spotify algorithm is worried about my emotional wellbeing. I hope you're happy.
> 
> I just want to thank each and every one of you reading this for making the journey from that first "Oh no" moment to the present such a fun and rewarding one. <3
> 
> This story is going to have to go on a little bit of a hiatus for the next couple weeks while I get moved back into college and finish drafting Arc Four. It'll be the last arc, and I really wanna take the time to give these kids the ending they deserve. I'm hoping to have the first chapter of the arc go up on Friday the 29th, and I'll update these end notes if that changes. Until then, I wish you guys a happy January and hope you stay safe, and I'm, as always, excited to talk with you in the comments! :D


	22. This Is a Crutch, Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone is lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're back! Without so much as a time skip! Welcome to Arc Four, unofficially subtitled, "How Many People Do We Have to Kill to Get Mercury Out of This Goddamn House?" The answer, of course, should be one (1), but it will end up being, "More than anyone is comfortable with." On that note - this arc is easily the darkest of this fic, especially the first half (as in Arc Two, the darkness is front-loaded, with the later chapters being more cathartic and hopeful). People we like are going to regress in frustrating ways. Bad things are going to happen to them, and they're going to do bad things. Wounds will heal crookedly. Progress won't be linear. The pace is going to be slower in places, there'll be a lot of violence, and catharsis will be a long time coming (say, about three to four weeks in our time). Like with Arc Two, I'm taking some risks with this one, and while I really hope they pan out, I understand if they don't.
> 
> That said, the "Happy Ending" tag is very much there for a reason :)
> 
> (Also this arc quickly ballooned from seven chapters to eight, two of which will have to be double uploads, so the chapter count has once again expanded.)
> 
> cw: In addition to the "Child Abuse" warning that follows Marcus everywhere, Mercury's POV section includes graphic violence and a lot of manifestations of trauma.

The second time Emerald approached Torchwick’s doorman, he didn’t scoff. He met her eyes like he’d been expecting her and swung the door wide without asking for the password. The suitcase of weapons in her hand and the gold blade strapped to her back—the blade that had cost her best friend his freedom—weighed heavy.

With a nod to the doorman, she started down into the dark.

Lavender had offered to back her up, but Emerald had turned her down. Torchwick’s reputation when it came to his dealings with Faunus was… checkered, and it would only take one or two of his jabs to set Lav off.

And she didn’t need Lavender by her side, saying reasonable things like, _You can’t just mosey up to the nearest crimelord and take out a hit on an assassin,_ or, _Shouldn’t we be focused on getting our new place squared away before the cops crack down?_

Or, _Wolfboy wouldn’t want you to throw away your life like this._

Emerald hadn’t told Lavender and Daily about the nightmare she’d found inside that square little house in the suburbs. She’d just returned to the brownstone in the gathering dusk to find them still there, watching the horizon, long after she’d told Lavender to run. Her eyes had been dry by then, her chest hollow.

“Emerald,” Daily had said. “Where’s…?” He’d trailed off at the look on her face.

“He’s not coming.” Emerald’s voice had felt like a stone in her throat.

Lavender had rushed forward but stopped short of touching her. “What do you mean? Is he okay? Is he hurt?” She’d paused, eyes narrowing. “Do I need to make good on that pavement-splattering deal?”

Emerald had shaken her head. “No. He’s just not coming.”

She never let them get any more than that out of her. They had their own guesses, she knew. Meleager Janus’s death report in the papers the next day had led them to a very different set of conclusions than the one Emerald had stumbled upon. They whispered about it while they thought she was asleep.

“Mercury wouldn’t just kill someone,” Daily had said.

“Then why would he run, Day? Why would Green come back… like that?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“We don’t know a lot of things about Wolfboy.”

Emerald had pulled her sleeping bag tighter around herself and bitten her lip and said nothing.

What had happened to Mercury had happened because he’d helped Emerald. It was up to her, to her alone, to fix it. He was her partner. She didn’t have the right to ask Lav and Daily to put themselves in harm’s way for her a second time.

Not after she’d proven that she’d leave her best friend to bleed if she had to.

And also… she just hadn’t been able to form the words. There was a part of her that couldn’t bring itself to destroy the confident, smirking image of her best friend that was still alive in Lav and Daily’s heads. She couldn’t make her voice cut him down stone by stone until nothing was left but the battered, frantic-faced boy she’d found lying on that sofa.

Mercury wouldn’t want that. The shame that had stood out in his eyes made her sure of it.

Torchwick’s speakeasy was nearly empty tonight, and not a soul inside of it was speaking easily, all of them huddled into booths in corners, whispering among themselves.

No surprise there. Every newspaper in Vale had reported on the massacre the police had found in the Tabard gang’s headquarters. Daily had scavenged them a copy out of a dumpster, hoping to make sure the cops were properly following the trail of clues Emerald had left them, the trail that would lead Rex Aurum straight to prison.

But she hadn’t been able to gloat over the column that recounted the shocking arrests of Signal students Rex Aurum and Orion Janus in connection to the robbery of the Downtown Vale Trust, or the Op-Ed from the SDC’s attorney, vowing to prosecute “those profoundly disturbed young men” to the fullest extent of the law.

No, her eyes had been drawn, inexorably, to the black-and-white crime scene photos in the inner pages of only the most unscrupulous tabloid publications—to the sightless-eyed woman with two rounds in her chest, sprawled on top of her shield—to her daughter, found in the room below, the grainy dark ink of the photo making her hair blend with the blood pouring from her throat.

In the five days since the robbery, Emerald’s stomach hadn’t stopped churning, her ears drumming with nausea, whenever she thought of the wire that had laid that girl’s throat open to the bone, the same wire that had sliced scars that would never fade into her best friend’s hands.

Every time the screaming urge to run back to the suburbs and kill everything that tried to keep her from Mercury overtook Emerald’s mind, she forced herself to look at those smudged, gory photographs again, to stare until Mercury’s words sank back in, the way they’d gone rough and splintered at the end making her eyes sting.

 _He’ll find us, and he’ll break you into pieces in front of me just like he does with everything_ _I love!_

She would be able, then, to set down the newspaper for a minute, to force down a couple granola bars before they could turn to grit in her throat, and remind herself to be patient, but within five minutes the thought would turn on her like a snake grabbed by the tail and sink its fangs into her wrist.

Every second she kept herself here, out of harm’s way, was a second Mercury spent alone with that lightning-lined razor wire, those knuckles that itched for blood, and staying put became a torture. The vivid imagination that had helped her while away the dull, lonely hours of her childhood turned from a friend to a tormentor. Instead of dreaming up castles and battling with Wyverns, it focused itself, entirely, on Mercury. Mercury, crying out in pain. Mercury, beaten into bloodied helplessness. Mercury, dead.

For seven years, he’d thrown his own life on the line to protect her. But no one had ever protected him.

Emerald was going to change that.

She walked briskly back to Torchwick’s booth, squaring her shoulders, setting her chin in the way she’d taught herself to in the past few months, in the way that made her into Someone Who Meant Business.

But she faltered when she reached the round wooden table where she and Mercury had ironed out their deal with Torchwick. The deal that had sealed Mercury’s fate.

All that time he’d spent running around the city with her, laughing and cracking jokes until she elbowed him, he’d been putting himself in danger so horrible that it made Emerald’s stomach turn over.

She pulled up a single chair, leaving a gap where Mercury should have been, and sat down across from Torchwick.

The nervous air of the whole speakeasy seemed to have infected him, too. His ludicrous red bangs hung limp at the side of his face, and his eyeliner was flakey and smudged.

“Hell of a week, kid,” he said, without looking up. With a flick of his thumb, he lit a cigar.

Emerald let her shoulders slump a little, her head nodding forward. “Hell of a week.”

Torchwick rolled his eyes. “Kid, one of my favorite rivals just got axed and my partner just got strong-armed off on a job that for all we know is a one-way trip. Meanwhile, if the papers are anything to go by, you just pulled off a job that should give you enough industry cred to get your foot in the door with any syndicate in town. I’ve earned ‘hell,’ Sippy Cup. You haven’t.”

Emerald, who had spent the past week living in a nightmare that was more horrifying than any of the worst-case scenarios she’d dreamed up while planning her heist, scowled. “You don’t know me.”

“What? Did you steal your partner’s bad attitude while you were busy robbing the… wait.” Torchwick leaned forward, his one visible eye widening. “Of course.” He smacked himself in the forehead and started speaking seemingly to himself. “That nose! Urgh! If it took me this long to figure it out, I must be slipping. And the kid was just playing the synonym pseudonym game! You’d think his dad would’ve…” Torchwick shook his head and refocused on Emerald. “Hell of a week.” His tone was different now. Assessing.

Emerald tilted her head, confused. “What?”

“Your partner.” He lowered his voice to a whisper, glanced both ways to be sure no one was listening. Emerald leaned close to hear. “He’s Marcus Black’s kid. Isn’t he?”

Biting her lip, Emerald nodded. She made herself square her shoulders again. “That’s why I’m here.” She set Rex’s blade on the table in front of her, placed the duffel bag beside it. “Me and my associates can get by with half the money you’ll get fencing that.”

“What, you chickened out on all that twelve-point-eight math?” he asked.

“You take your cut, and with the rest of that half—” Emerald set her jaw—“I’d like to take out a hit on Marcus Black.”

Torchwick leaned back, his one visible eye widening. “Sustrai, I’m going to do us both a favor and forget that you said that.”

“I did a job for you,” said Emerald, “and I want someone dead. I _know_ you have connections who can make that happen.”

“Ha!” Torchwick took another puff of his cigar. “I _wish_ I was that big-leagues, kid. Seriously, I’m flattered.”

Emerald decided to go in for a jab. “I didn’t know the Tabards were so far out of your league.”

“They are _not,_ ” Torchwick said, visibly rankled, and Emerald’s jab did what she’d hoped it would, because he kept talking. “Especially with Aly’s brains cut off of their operation. But Marcus Black didn’t work for the Tabards, not really. He’s answering to something bigger, and that something bigger, whatever it is, wanted Alyson Rothschild and her oldest daughter dead. And it’s got its claws in all of us now.”

“If he’s started killing off crime bosses,” said Emerald, “you might want to take him out before he decides you’re next.”

“Or I might _not_ want to poke a rabid dog with a stick,” Torchwick hissed. “Everyone who’s anyone is linking up with whatever’s giving Black his orders, even what’s left of the Tabards, and I dunno about you, kid, but I like picking the winning side.”

“I guess you also like having no spine.” Emerald cut her eyes at him.

The mocking light in Torchwick’s eyes went out, and in its place, Emerald saw something that scared her. “I may not be a very big fish, Sippy Cup, but you’re a minnow here. And forgetting that is an _excellent_ way to get yourself killed.”

Emerald almost recoiled, cowed, but the lightless cold of Marcus Black’s eyes flashed suddenly in her mind. She’d seen much, much scarier than Roman Torchwick.

She propped her elbows on the table. “Fine. You don’t want to put your neck on the line. But I do. So tell me. How do I make that son of a bitch stop breathing?”

That spark of interest came back. Torchwick glanced one way, then the other. “Kid, I believe this is a back-room conversation.”

The back room of Torchwick’s speakeasy was a far cry from the suede and green of the bar itself. It was cold and industrial, with schematics and blueprints spilling down the sides of a hard metal table. A colorfully annotated map of the city stretched across the far wall, all the districts that Emerald had noticed intuitively in nine years on the street jotted down as fact.

Torchwick locked the door behind them. “What we’re about to discuss does _not_ leave this room. You got that, Sustrai?”

Emerald nodded. “Got it.”

Torchwick set his hands on the table and let out a frustrated sigh. “Marcus fucking Black has been nothing but a menace since he came to this city seven years ago. He wrecks every bar he drinks at, he kills everyone who tries to cut him off, and he has no sense of humor whatsoever. If you put him down, kid, every crook in this city would praise you in poems and song, and I would be first in line.”

Emerald frowned in confusion, because if he was trying to convince her not to kill Marcus Black, he sure had a funny way of going about it.

“So why do you think none of us has killed him yet?”

_Oh._

“Because you’re scared of him?” Emerald asked, because she couldn’t afford fear, not now, because she needed to make it a feeling that was for other people but not for her.

“‘Cause he’s the deadliest assassin on the continent,” said Torchwick, “and that’s risking an understatement. Every person who’s tried their hand at killing him has wound up very, very dead. So yeah. We’re scared. Anyone with half a brain would be.”

“Did they know where he lives?” Emerald asked. "The people who tried to kill him?"

Torchwick blinked. “Now, _that’s_ new.” He frowned, concentrating. “It gives you half-decent shot at the element of surprise.” He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be enough.”

Emerald frowned, leafing through idea after idea. “Can I ask a question that might be dumb?”

“As long as I’m allowed to laugh in your face.”

“Has nobody just… tipped off the police?”

 _“Ha!”_ Torchwick flung his head back, convulsed with mirth. He laughed for long enough that Emerald gave more than a second’s thought to shooting his bowler hat straight off of his head to get his attention back. “Oh, man, that’s a good one.” He wiped a tear from his eye and smudged his mascara. “Thanks, kid, I needed the laugh.”

“Seriously, though,” said Emerald, “why not?”

“See, somebody _did_ try that, about five years back, right when everybody was getting sick of trying to kill him.”

“And?”

“Guy turned up in a gutter three days later with his throat looking… well, a lot like Brunnhilde Argent’s,” said Torchwick, and a chill ran up Emerald’s spine. “Marcus Black may be gutter scum like the rest of us at base, but he’s got some friends in very high places.”

And some little, silvery part of Emerald knew exactly what joke Mercury would make if he were standing next to her right now.

She said it for him. “I wonder how he got those friends with such a shitty sense of humor.”

Torchwick smiled. “You know, kid, I’d consider it a personal favor from you to me if you didn’t get yourself killed.”

“Then help me not get killed,” said Emerald. “I’m doing this. With your help or not.” Her fingers gripped the edge of the table until her knuckles turned white. “I’m not leaving Mercury there.”

“Oh no.” Torchwick planted his face in his hand. “You’re gonna make me give you fatherly advice, aren’t you, kid?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” said Torchwick, “that if you wanna get anywhere in this world, you have to pick your battles, and Marcus Black’s kid… that’s a hell of a battle.”

Emerald set her jaw. “I already picked it. A long time ago.”

Torchwick’s face went hard. “Look, Sustrai, I know it may be hard to get this through your head given you just got old enough to ride your first tricycle, so I’m going to break it down for you. Your moody friend is the center of his old man’s world. You get more than three drinks in that asshole, and he starts talking. He even gets _philosophical.”_ Torchwick grimaced. “And he goes on and on and on, so long you get sick of it, about his son. About how he wants to leave a legacy behind when somebody finally caps him, so the Black name will live forever.” Torchwick rolled his eyes. “Stupid shit, like any of us have any control over what people think of us once we hit room temperature.”

_You really love hearing yourself speak, don’t you?_

“But stupid or not, Marcus Black thinks his son is the key to controlling that. And he’s going to do his damnedest to kick that kid into a shape that’ll cast the shadow he wants. Now, if he knows you’ve been throwing a wrench in that shape for… well however long you and Marc Mark Two have been pals, that bastard will murder you so comprehensively that there won’t be enough of you left to fill—” he laughed hollowly—“well, a sippy cup.”

Emerald thought of Mercury, nine years old, standing over her with his fists doubled up. Mercury, at fifteen, saying, with bile in his voice, “He really did try to make me grow up to be just like him.”

She knew exactly what shape Marcus was trying to beat Mercury into, and she didn’t need this smug fop in a bowler hat to tell her what she already knew too well.

“Look,” she said, “unless you can tell me something I don’t know in the next ten seconds, I’m just gonna go take my best shot at slicing the bastard’s head off.”

“Always rush, rush, rush with you kids. No patience,” Torchwick griped. “The _point_ , Sippy Cup, is that in our line of work, things get complicated fast, and when things get complicated, you tend to get dead. So, you want to make it for real? One thing. You get one thing to care about. And sometimes—” he sighed, taking his hat off and running a hand over the brim—“sometimes even that’s too much.” His eyes turned sharp. “So you can’t be an idiot about picking it.

“You’re a kid, Sustrai, a moderately talented kid, but still. I’m sure you’ve got big puffy dreams. Making a name for yourself, getting off the streets, collecting the world’s largest supply of trashy romance paperbacks, whatever. You pick this fight, and all that’s as good as gone. So take ten seconds to kiss it all goodbye before you fully commit to stupid, and then we’ll talk.”

And even though she was pretty sure she was already set on the answer, Emerald did what he asked.

The day she’d spent giving stolen money to the other kids who lived on the streets. The thousands of spectators in Amity Coliseum cheering as one when Winter Schnee, sword shorn in half, looked up with a thin smile and kept fighting. The pink-clad woman Emerald had saved from a mugger when she was twelve, the grateful way she’d wrapped her arms around her.

Emerald did want that. She wanted to grow up to be someone powerful and good, someone who knew what the right thing was and was strong enough to do it, who would never let anyone feel as small and helpless as she’d been, once upon a time.

She wanted to grow up.

 _“But if you’ve got a good partner and a good team, you can’t go wrong.”_ To Emerald’s dazzled, ten-year-old eyes, Lunette Fontaigne had looked like a silver-eyed goddess. Someone amazing had told her that she could be amazing too, and the dizzying excitement of it had left her shivery and grinning.

If Marcus Black killed her, Emerald would never find out what she could do. But Lunette’s first few words were lodged in her mind.

_If you’ve got a good partner._

Mercury, standing beside her shoulder and scowling, like he was ready to fight four trained adults with only his worn-out steel-toed boots. Mercury, trying to kick a full-fledged Huntsman in the back of the neck so that she could make off with Mrs. Copperfield’s money. Mercury, brushing a tear from her face with a trembling hand, trying to take care of her even when he was the one who was trapped and bloodied and shaking.

Emerald had a good partner. And now, now that he’d helped her kick down the last of the demons that had come creeping out of her childhood, he needed her help. He needed a good partner.

When she thought of him standing in the shattered window of his house, the knife-like shards of it framing his face, a hand braced over his broken ribs—when she thought of him watching her with bloodshot eyes, his voice breaking in his mouth—it was no choice at all.

“I’m taking it,” she said. “I understand the risks. But I _won’t_ let this happen to Mercury. I can’t.”

Torchwick bowed his head, then propped his hat back on it. “Fair enough, Sippy Cup.” He clapped his hands together and slapped a new swath of paper down on the desk. “All right, step one. What defenses has Black got on that house?”

“One-way windows, nailed shut” said Emerald, as Torchwick pulled a black marker out of his pocket and tossed it to her, “Not bulletproof, though, but that could change. His scroll goes off when they break. Doors are deadbolted from the outside, pretty standard long-range scroll lock, gets a ping whenever it opens.”

As she spoke, she drew a large, wobbly square on the paper, doing her best to roughly delineate it into the rooms she had seen: garage, living-dining-kitchen space, Mercury’s bedroom, the bathroom she’d seen across the hall. That left only one big square empty, so Emerald guessed that was where Marcus slept. She scrawled in little markings for all the windows and doors she’d been able to make out.

“Hmm,” said Torchwick. “I gotta say, I expected more paranoia. I’m a little disappointed. Well, you want Black dead, the first thing to do is get inside that house without him knowing, get the kid up to speed, and figure out how to kill the son of a bitch from there.”

“Okay,” Emerald said, capping the marker with a frown. “How do I do that?”

Torchwick smirked. “By helping me take the legs out from under my competition while they’re down, of course.”

Emerald snorted. Trust Torchwick to find a way to leverage her revenge quest for profit. “And how, exactly, does that help me?”

“Sustrai, how do you think the Tabards got rich enough to afford a nearly exclusive right to Black’s services?”

Emerald could tell that this was one of those questions that grown-ups asked just so that you’d say the wrong thing and then they could look smart by telling you the real answer, so she sidestepped. “How?”

Torchwick took another drag from his cigar. “Good old Aly’s third husband was a forgettable little slip of a guy. He was also the best programmer outside of Atlas. And as a wedding gift, he gave her the Skeleton Key.”

“Which is?”

“A piece of code in the scrolls of every high-ranking member of the Tabards’ leadership that lets them open any scroll-locked door in the city. No pings to the owner. No pesky alarms. In and out like a ghost. By the time the rest of us figured out how Aly was stockpiling so much loot, she’d used it to hire Marcus. And there was no getting at that Key with her guard dog snarling around it. Alotta wannabe geniuses died when she got wind of them trying to replicate it, but now…”

“She’s dead,” said Emerald. “And Marcus Black isn’t on their payroll anymore, which means the Key…”

“See, kid, you’re a born accomplice! Look at you giving me sentences to finish, very sweet of you.” Torchwick grinned. “Which means the Key is vulnerable. Now, if I were to roll up to the Tabards’ yearly soirée next month with an up-and-coming jewel thief under the old wing as a plus one, said jewel thief and I might be able to make it out of there with a copy of the Skeleton Key each.”

“That’s too long,” said Emerald, chest going cold. “Merc could be dead by then for all I know.”

“Kid, Marcus Black isn’t going to throw his precious legacy away that easy. I’m sure your friend’ll be… well, alive at least.”

The feeling of coldness didn’t go away.

“Tell you what,” said Torchwick, pulling a scroll from his pocket, “I’ll give you some homework so you’ve got something to do till then. Kids like homework, right?”

“Not usually, I think,” said Emerald. Her mind was drifting again, back to Mercury, always back to Mercury. She dug her nails into her palms to stay focused.

“Well, a perfect excuse to prove you’re not like the other girls.” Torchwick shrugged. “I’ve been looking into the problem of Marcus Black since the Tabards went down last week, trying to find patterns, weak points, pizza preferences, you name it. I got the logs from the employers he had before he came to Vale right here.” He tapped the scroll. “I can send them to you now so you can start planning your little murder, plus profiles of what’s left of the Tabard’s leadership for our half of the job.”

“I—I don’t have a scroll,” said Emerald, feeling suddenly, strangely ashamed. “None of my friends do.”

Torchwick fixed her with a look that was hard to read, almost… sympathetic. “I was small fry, too, kid, once upon a time.” He smiled. “How about I throw a few in for you and your little pals? Payment. Since I’m hiring you to get that Key for me.”

Emerald was still for a moment, the marker balanced between her fingers. Did Mercury have a month? Did she have any better option?

She didn’t, no matter how much she racked her brain. And slow as it was, Torchwick’s plan was the only line that seemed to lead out of the choking darkness around her.

“Okay,” she said, and she braced her hands on the table. “Let’s do this.”

* * *

It was summer in the mountains.

The clean, sun-gold air felt good in Mercury’s lungs, the budding blades of grass brushing against shins that no longer had greaves to shield them. He could almost imagine Fenri bounding down the sloping meadow at his feet and looping back to drop a stick into his hands. Even after all his years in the city, with its flat, humid streets and undercurrent of gasoline, something about the sight of sunlight on trees still felt like _home._

Marcus’s hand clapped down hard on his injured shoulder, and Mercury didn’t flinch at the jolt of pain that crackled up his spine.

He’d had worse, now.

The feeling of home shriveled and died. But with Emerald gone… maybe that failure to wince, that going still in the face of pain, was the closest thing to home Mercury could have.

Gods knew it was more familiar than anything else.

It had been two weeks now, since his Semblance had come tearing out of his chest, since Emerald had kissed the place between his eyebrows that his fingers kept straying to when Marcus wasn’t looking and then vanished.

Marcus had had a job, after that, so Mercury had spent three days in silence, lying on his stomach on his mattress and watching the sun crawl up one side of the window and back down the other before night turned the ragged hole in his wall into a gaping set of black jaws. Every so often, a tear would make itself known at the corner of his eye and slowly work its way down the side of his face, then the wrist under it, then down into the mattress. It wasn’t crying, Mercury told himself. He didn’t feel anything when it happened, not like when he’d gone to pieces in Em’s arms. It just happened, like the sun.

It had happened twenty-three times by the time Marcus got back. Mercury didn’t think much until then. It hurt just to breathe, and that helped, in a strange way, because it gave him something to focus on other than the memory of Emerald’s hands cupping his face and her breath in his hair and her voice saying his whole name like… like she loved him.

If he thought too hard about what he’d lost, he was sure the real tears would come back, and he couldn’t afford that. Not anymore.

Sure, he wanted Em to come crashing through his window with Lav and Daily and a squadron of Huntsmen in tow. Sure, he wanted to see her smile again. But Emerald didn’t have a squadron of Huntsmen, just a couple friends with shitty self-preservation instincts, and if she came back to him now, Marcus would kill her.

Mercury couldn’t wish her back.

And then Marcus had come home. And he’d been different. He’d smiled—to himself, always to himself, never for Mercury—and said, “Now, boy, we can really get to work.”

He’d changed the bandages on Mercury’s cuts while Mercury sat in front of him, rigid and waiting for him to splash liquor on them or claw them back open. But he hadn’t. He’d patched another layer of bandages over the wounds and gone on his way, like he had when Mercury was too small to do it himself. He’d made sure Mercury did breathing exercises to help his ribs heal. He’d cooked them both dinner. A shitty dinner, but still.

It wasn’t kindness. Mercury wasn’t a stupid little kid who could believe that anymore. But something had changed. Since Marcus had taken his Semblance, Mercury had become valuable, somehow. He didn’t know why. If he knew why, maybe the horrible twist of anticipation in his stomach would loosen.

He had a feeling that he was about to find out.  
  
“Tell me what you see,” Marcus said, the hand on Mercury’s shoulder lifting. Mercury didn’t try to roll out the ache it had left behind.

“Not much cover till those rock formations,” Mercury said, nodding out at the jagged maze of granite that the meadow gave way to. “Then there’s a lot of good ambush points. Anybody on the ground’s an easy mark.

“Since you’ll be springing an ambush in the rocks,” said Marcus, “You should keep that in mind.”

With a sinking feeling, Mercury struggled to find a reply that wouldn’t sound like backtalk or wavering. The hollow place in his chest ached, and he wanted to slump down into the grass and sleep, not play along with whatever game Marcus had planned.

But that wasn’t an option.

He found the question that would let him move on another round.

“Who am I ambushing?”

Marcus handed him a scroll, and it was all Mercury could do not to snap, _You know I can’t read this, you drunk fucking bastard._

Maybe Marcus had drunk enough that he didn’t even know that anymore.

Mercury got lucky, because Marcus, in all his infinite generosity, took it upon himself to explain unprompted.

“Your first target, boy.” Mercury’s stomach turned over. “Ari Dunai. Beacon dropout. He’s been guiding travelers through this maze and keeping the Grimm off their tails these past few months. Done a decent job. His combat scores against humans, though.” Marcus took a swig from his flask and chuckled. “They were low. Ol’ Ozzie gets his kids way too focused on the least dangerous kinds of monsters.”

“And I…” Mercury wasn’t strong enough to finish the sentence.

_I’m one of the monsters._

The hand came down on Mercury’s shoulder again, tightened, the fingers threatening to dig in. “ _You_ will hunt him down a damn sight better than any Beowulf can, now that that crutch of a Semblance is gone.” Marcus circled around Mercury, pale eyes boring into his own. “No more sneaking. No more weaseling out of the hits. You’re going to be strong now.” Marcus’s fingers tightened, gouging into Mercury’s shoulder. Mercury tightened his jaw and crushed his teeth together and didn’t wince.

“Yes sir,” he managed to grit out around the building pain. Marcus’s grip on his shoulder loosened, then fell away. Mercury didn’t relax.

“Here,” Marcus said, and he pulled two items from the holster of his weapon. The sight of them made Mercury feel seasick. “For the last two crutches you broke.”

Mercury forced his left hand not to shake as he stretched it out, as the fingers wrapped themselves around the handle of the heavy, gleaming kitchen knife that he’d drawn across the throat of the stray when he was twelve. His right was steady as death when it took hold of the pistol he’d pointed at Fenri.

He tucked the weapons into his belt and balled his hands into fists. “Thank you.” His voice felt wooden.

“Now, I’ll be right behind you, boy, to clean up the mess if you lose. I’m getting paid whether you can swing this or not.” Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “But any son of mine will be able to swing it.”

Mercury understood the threat in the words. The only thing in the world more dangerous than being Marcus Black’s son was probably being Marcus Black’s disowned son.

“Semblance?” Mercury asked.

Marcus’s fist dashed against Mercury’s face so hard that his aura didn’t stop him from seeing stars and stumbling back, doubling over. Marcus’s fingers knotted themselves into the hair at the crown of his head—the same place Em’s hand had rested not long ago, a weak part of Mercury reminded him, the same place she’d swat at lightly when he was bugging her—and wrenched it back.

The creepy serenity that had overtaken his father’s face in the past two weeks was gone. In an instant, rage had screwed it back up into a familiar pattern, lip curling, eyes blazing under knitted brows.

Mercury hated how the fear made his breath catch in his throat. This had happened before. It would happen again. It didn’t have the right to scare him like this every time. But it did.

“Two weeks,” Marcus snarled into his face. “Two weeks, and you think you’ve earned it back?” He flung Mercury to the ground. “You miserable, spoiled little—” he was drawing back his foot to kick, and Mercury struggled to speak.

“Not mine!” he shouted. “The target’s! What’s his Semblance?”

Just like that, Marcus lowered his foot back down, let out a laugh. “Oh! You had me going there for a minute, boy!” He didn’t offer Mercury a hand up, and that was good, because Mercury didn’t want to have to negotiate the double trap of Marcus judging him either weak for taking the hand or insolent for refusing it. He clambered to his feet on his own.

“Passive.” Marcus shrugged. “Keeps him from getting lost in the maze. Only reason he got the job. Useless in combat, though.”

 _Unless he’s smart enough to make tactical retreats that get his opponent all turned around._ Sometimes, Mercury thought that maybe Marcus’s Semblance made him blind to how tricky they could be. He felt a brief twinge of satisfaction, remembering the feeling of phasing free of a brick wall and leaving Rex Aurum behind, trapped and fused forever.

Not that he’d ever be able to do something like that again.

“Good to know,” said Mercury, the kitchen knife icy against his hip. “Where do I find him?”

Marcus shrugged. “That’s your job. Now get going.” A hand caught Mercury’s injured shoulder again and dragged him forward, then pushed him out, so he had to plant his feet carefully to keep from stumbling down the hillside.

Mercury took one careful, heavy step, then another. And another, until his vision was nothing but the leering grey fangs of the rocks. With each step, they seemed to shake, leaving afterimages in his eyes. Like static. Like waves on a beach. He’d never been to the beach.

He was about to kill someone, and he’d never been to the beach.

When he reached the edge of the rock formation and slid silently down the embankment, his training guiding his puppet-like movements, he froze.

Was he about to kill someone?

He’d killed dogs. They’d both felt like someones. But it probably wasn’t the same with humans. It was supposed to be… heavier, right?

He’d wanted to kill people before. He’d have been happy to kick a bullet straight through Rex Aurum’s skull if leaving him trapped in that wall to rot hadn’t been so much fun. He might not have minded killing Meleager either.

Except, when Marcus’s bullet had blown his head to pieces, it had made Mercury want to fall down and throw up.

Was he about to kill someone?

If he didn’t, Marcus would probably kill the guy anyway. Maybe he’d finally hit the very end of his rope and kill Mercury, too. Maybe he’d shove his Semblance back into his chest just so that he could rip it out again. There was a scraping feeling under Mercury’s sternum at the thought.

He was going to have to kill someone. But.

Emerald standing outside the window, just in arm’s reach and a million miles away all at once, saying, _Wait for me._ Saying, _Don’t let that bastard make you forget who you are._ Those orders were the only solid things in his hollowed-out chest, the thin wooden stays holding back an avalanche

He wouldn’t last long enough for her to come back (she wasn’t coming back) if he didn’t kill someone. But killing someone—if he was going by the way people who weren’t Marcus talked about it, by Em’s fairy tales—did something to you that was irreversible.

Mercury found himself glancing up over his shoulder at Marcus prowling through the rocks behind him. Had _he_ ever walked to a kill with this churning feeling in his stomach? Probably not. Hopefully not.

People like Marcus didn’t start out hoping to be decent, Mercury was pretty sure, but if he had… could the same thing happen to Mercury?

Was he about to kill someone?

He moved silently along the floor of the maze of rocks, listening for any sounds that—his mind toggled frantically between “the target” and “Ari,” and the disconnect made a pressure between his eyebrows—that might lead him to—

Was he about to kill someone?

Would his chest ever stop fucking aching?

_Chunk._

The sound of someone sliding down the slope, just over the rock wall to his right. If he climbed over it…

And then he was climbing over it, finding handholds, planting his boots in the places where the rock held steady, staying quiet. Beneath him, Marcus seemed like the shadow he cast on the ground.

Mercury’s chin cleared the jagged wall of rock, and he peered down into the narrow, stone-lined track that wound past twenty feet beneath him. Walking down the path was a young man with broad shoulders hidden under a dorky-ass blue cape. Mercury couldn’t tell much else from above.

Was he about to kill someone?

As the guy drew closer to Mercury’s hiding place, Mercury could make out the flicker of hard-light Dust in the dorky-ass cape. Impractical weapon for a fight, maybe, but for someone who spent ninety-percent of his time just trying not to get crushed by rocks, it was a pretty solid move.

Mercury’s mind fell into the old patterns of its training. No use firing down at that cape from above. Any bullets would ricochet right off. No, he’d have to drop down fast and get in close faster, use the kitchen knife to slice through the weak point the clasp presented and then get to shooting before the target could whip that cloak up and knock him away in a cyan flare of energy.

Between this guy and Rex fucking Aurum, Mercury had a feeling he was going to get pretty sick of hard-light Dust.

This guy. Who’d had a team once. Friends, maybe, waiting for him.

But the place where Mercury’s heart had been felt so yawningly empty that he wasn’t sure anything good could grow in its place.

Ari—the target. The target—Ari. Whatever Mercury was going to call him, he was entering the target zone.

Again, the toggling froze Mercury to the spot, dazed and weak and so, so godsdamn tired of struggling against the person he was probably going to get beaten into anyway. The twig-thin strength of Emerald’s orders groaned and buckled against the weight of fifteen years of training.

The twigs snapped.

The training won. Mercury let it take his body, let it roll like a boulder into the place where his Semblance had been and crush everything in its path. It knew what to do.

Gods, he just wanted to know what to do.

Mercury sprang.

The image of Marcus leaping from the underbrush to swing his baton down at Maura Ellwood flashed through his mind as the ground and the blue cloak raced up toward him.

And at least now he wasn’t the scared, useless boy standing on the sidelines, hands empty, wishing for a rescue that would never come. This was better, he thought, even as he tasted bile.

He swung his foot down in an arc so that his boot slammed into the target’s face and sent him stumbling backwards, leaving room for Mercury to coil and land in a crouch in front of him.

Ari Dunai had a soulpatch beard that probably qualified as a war crime and deep blue eyes. His hair was brown, a fluffy rat’s nest from the constant movement of the hood up and down.

Even though Mercury was six years younger and skinny and aching all over, the moment he landed, he knew who was the predator and who was the prey. If the frightened set of Dunai’s face was anything to go by, he knew it, too.

Before Dunai could recover, Mercury charged him, drawing the pistol and firing twice. The first shot connected with the target’s chest and sent him staggering backward, reflexively raising the cloak and shielding himself from the second bullet. Dunai’s arm swept back out just as Mercury closed on him, and an arc of glowing blue energy caught Mercury in the gut and slammed him backward into the wall of the pass.

His breath gone, Mercury fired again before his feet hit the ground, probing the defense, trying to find weaknesses. Dunai caught the bullet on his cloak again, slammed out another wave with the opposite arm. Mercury rolled under it, drawing his knife.

_There._

In the moment Dunai swung outward, he left his underarm and a little of his side exposed. It was a small weakness, but the training knew just how to exploit it.

Mercury kicked off the ground and propelled himself up under Dunai’s guard, the knife caught in both hands, and rammed it up into the Huntsman’s side with as much aura behind it as he dared. A jolt ran up Mercury’s arm as the blade broke skin and rebounded against the solid cage of the target’s ribs.

Dunai winced, his face curling into a snarl, and before Mercury could retreat, he’d gathered the fabric of his cloak around his left fist and slammed it into Mercury’s jaw.

Mercury stumbled backwards, a feedback whine sounding in his head, and only just ducked the next wave of light. A flicker of white appeared in the corner of his eye. Marcus, standing on the rocks overhead, his arms crossed, watching. In his shadow, Mercury rose back to his feet.

_Finish it, boy._

Mercury kicked off the wall of the path and launched himself straight at the target, his trajectory predictable, and watched as Dunai took the bait. A vertical arc of energy came scything toward Mercury, and he twisted in midair, just barely dodging it. The strike had left Dunai open, and Mercury fired into the gap in his defense, striking ribs again.

As he closed, Mercury twisted again, bringing his knife forward and hooking it under the clasp of that godsdamn cloak just as Dunai drew his cloth-covered fist back for another punch. Mercury didn’t give it the chance to land. He planted both boots in Dunai’s chest, caught up a fistful of the cloak in his pistol hand, and launched himself backward, snapping the clasp and tearing the cloak from its owner’s shoulders.

Mercury skidded to a halt a few paces away. While Dunai was still staring down at his bare hands in shock, Mercury slashed the cloak through the air, sending out a ripple of energy that caught him in the stomach and sent him plummeting to the ground in a flicker of aura that was a strange shade of blue.

Emerald would have known how to name the color. She knew how to call things indigo and aquamarine and cerulean.

And maybe that was what made Mercury see, instead of a big-shouldered, terribly bearded Huntsman hitting the ground hard elbows-first, a scrawny, nine-year-old Emerald with fear and hurt in her eyes.

Mercury froze again. What was he doing? What the fuck was he doing?

Was he about to kill someone?

Sweat made his grip on the pistol slippery and uncertain. He took a wavering step forward, his eyes fixed on the swelling line of blood his knife had made along the right side of Dunai’s chest. He took another step, not sure if he meant to finish the job or try to stop the bleeding.

He never found out which he meant.

Because Dunai, with a speed and a snarl of rage that Mercury couldn’t have predicted, drew a handgun from the back of his belt and fired it twice. Mercury’s aura shattered.

And it was all wrong. The flickering, silver-grey color that had always been there, that had sent up bright, steely sparks of resistance before fading, was gone. Stolen. In its place was a drab, flat white, crawling over Mercury’s chest, his arms, his hands. The same lifeless shade as his father’s aura.

The emptiness inside him—it must match the one inside Marcus, and Mercury felt a stinging behind his eyes as an old reflex spun him out of the way of the next shot.

He was already a monster. That irreversible damage he’d feared—it had already been done.

 _Why would you show me that?!_ He raised his pistol, aimed it at Dunai’s forehead. _Why would you make me know that?!_

He fired. Twice.

Ari Dunai twitched once and then went still. Mercury was weak. He turned his head away so he wouldn’t have to see the thing he’d done, the corpse he’d made, he knew how the blood would make an uneven circle, he knew, from Marcus, from Fenri, from the stray, and he didn’t need to see it again.

With a quick gliding of leather on rock, Marcus’s booted feet landed beside him.

“Sloppy,” said a gruff voice in his ear.

Mercury didn’t flinch. He stood tall, and he holstered his gun, and he felt nothing.

And he hated himself.

“But you’ll do.” For the first time in his life, he heard a note of pride in Marcus Black’s voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor genderbent Ariadne never stood a chance.
> 
> Hoo boy, we are in for a rough few weeks here, but it's also great to be back! I've really missed posting this story and getting to chat about it with you guys :D Since it's been a while (and since the planned first chapter of the arc ended up clocking in at 13k words), I decided to do a double upload this week, with the second installment going up Saturday night! I'm planning to post a chapter every Friday from here to the story's end.
> 
> As always, thank you so, so much for reading and joining in on this ride.
> 
> Also! If you would like to suffer more, @shooty-booties has created an amazing and absolutely devastating gif of a moment from last chapter that you can find [here](https://shooty-booties.tumblr.com/post/639874474935828480/i-am-once-again-asking-you-to-read-the-fic-loved). Please go check it out, it made me cry.


	23. This Is a Crutch, Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emerald and Mercury take desperate measures for desperate times, and the Guys Who Brought Provisions get an unexpected moment in the limelight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's part two! Hope you enjoy! :D
> 
> cw: Referenced child abuse

Emerald didn’t put a bookshelf in her apartment.

Instead, she hung up a punching bag.

Torchwick had helped her set up a couple bank accounts under a false name—congratulations, June Veridian, you may not exist, but you’re in possession of a boatload of dubiously acquired cash. With her new scroll, she’d wired most of the money into an account for Lav and Daily. It’d be more than enough for them to live comfortably, even factoring in the bribes they might need to make a landlord turn a blind eye to their ages.

She’d given them their scrolls, told them everything they needed to know to get their own apartment squared away, and, with a flare of her Semblance, vanished.

No way in hell was she going to drag her friends into this mess she’d failed to stop.

The vanishing part would have been a lot easier to do if Torchwick hadn’t wired all their scrolls together so that they still had her number.

Now, as Emerald was scrubbing sweat from her face after her latest bout with the punching bag, her scroll was buzzing on the kitchen counter beside her. She leaned over and glanced at it. Daily.

She flipped it over onto its face and went to take a shower.

Aside from the tiny closet of a bathroom, her apartment was only a single room, a miniscule kitchen wedged in between the front door and the bathroom, her bed pressed up against the far side of the counter. The previous occupant had left a squashy old sofa beneath the window that looked out onto the snarling gargoyle looming over the entrance of the temple across the street.

It should have been paradise.

She didn’t have to keep all her shower supplies in a mildewing bucket that she lugged alone to a truckstop at dusk. She didn’t have to change straight back into her dirty clothes when she was done and sprint back home feeling eyes crawling over her.

She had a fridge that could store cold food and a stove that could make hot food, and she never had to taste another granola bar again in her life if she didn’t want to.

When she got out of the shower, she changed straight back into her dirty clothes and slumped onto her bed, her scroll in one hand and a granola bar in the other.

She’d been living here for three weeks now, but she hadn’t had time to buy herself pajamas. Or teach herself to cook. Or sleep.

The only thing Emerald had time to do was spar with her punching bag and scroll and scroll and scroll through the files Torchwick had given her.

She had to be ready.

But instead of going straight to the files, she found herself opening her folder of texts from Lavender. Daily had tried—eighty-eight times now—to call her, to give her the option of picking up. Lavender, true to form, had taken a more direct approach. The messages had started rolling in less than an hour after Emerald had pulled off her vanishing act.

_green where are you?_

_is everything okay?_

_okay, stupid question_

_could you tell us what’s up?_

_you have our address, so_

_you could just_

_come by_

_whenever_

_we’ll be here_

She’d waited five hours before starting in again.

_if wolfboy’s in trouble we wanna help_

_seriously_

_even though he has that hair lol_

_green where are you?_

It had been a day—and a dozen calls from Daily—later, when she’d texted again.

_srsly, does he need help or his ass kicked?_

_i’m on standby for either one_

_just gimme my marching orders green_

Another day—another seven calls—before the next batch.

_still here_

_if you guys are just making out i’m going to have to fucking kabob you_

_sorry_

_jokes to cope_

_wolfboy’d get it_

_still here_

_whenever you wanna talk_

_if you ever wanna talk_

There’d been a couple days of silence after that, fewer calls from Daily, like they were trying to give her space.

_green we know something bad is up_

_and it’s fucking scary not knowing what it is_

_also our apartment super is totally racist and we’ve told him we’ve got a mom she just works double shifts and is never home but if you could pop by with a nice illusion of a wholesome looking lady with horns that’d be great_

_you know_

_so he knows we’re some of the “good ones”_

Another few hours had slid past before:

_no pressure though_

_just_

_when you’re ready_

_we could use some help_

Another long pause. Emerald had woken up to this next bit after falling asleep over her scroll.

_godsdammit, you’re gonna make me say it, aren’t you_

_you fucking are_

_okay_

_here goes_

_day misses you green_

_i miss you_

_come back_

_i’ll even throw in the magic word, green, watch me_

_please_

_please come back, green_

Emerald had blinked hard and shoved her scroll under one of the sofa cushions. She’d knocked the punching bag off of its hook and had to duct-tape it back together.

But then, for a few days, there had been silence.

_so about that whole reparations thing_

_turns out turning the streets into a post-racial utopia is pretty tricky_

_who knew_

_most of the leftover golds are still assholes even after we beat them up and the strong ones who were willing to shove the most got the most cash_

_who knew_

_me and day are doing our best and we have a little backup, but_

_you’re the one with the plans, green_

_you’re the one they saw win_

_you’re the one they’re scared of_

_they need to see you out here_

_WE need to see you out here_

_so will you please get out here?_

_you don’t even have to talk with us if you don’t want_

_just_

_we need your help_

_or even if you don’t help_

_could you just talk?_

_green i need to know you’re not dead_

_i need to know i didn’t ruin everything like i fucking always do_

_like, just a godsdamn :) would be enough right now_

A day of silence. Emerald wasn’t sure, by then, why she hadn’t just blocked Lavender’s number, and Daily’s, too. Maybe she couldn’t bear to let go of them as totally as she needed to. Maybe she liked being able to see their aura meters, floating steadily in the green, never plunging. Maybe she figured that if she was going to burn her entire life to the ground, it was her job to watch the smoke.

Maybe she wanted someone to tell her that she was exactly as weak and selfish and useless as she felt.

_actually, green, if you sent a :) at this point i’d be forced to kill you_

_so actually it’s good that you didn’t do that_

_that you didn’t do fucking anything_

There was a days-long silence after that message, and in that silence, Emerald thought about the house in the suburbs, about how she’d run from it without looking back.

About how she hadn’t done fucking anything.

About how she deserved this.

_you know what?_

_fuck you_

_we don’t need you_

_we’ll be fine_

_so just_

_enjoy your fucking pity party or whatever_

_i’m not texting again_

_i’m not_

_fuck you_

_fuck you_

_fuck you_

Except, four days later, Lavender texted again.

_green, i’m sorry_

_i wish i could unsend that_

_i sent it cause we do need you_

_we need your help_

_we need to know you’re okay_

_we need a third to play bs with_

_we just need you_

_just come here, we’ll be here_

_and we can hug and cry and learn and grow or whatever_

A day passed.

_please_

_Emerald, if you ever gave a shit_

Six hours later, the last message came in.

_fine_

Emerald scrolled to the bottom of the jagged column of texts, making it bounce against the borders of the frame as she dragged it up again and again to see if any new messages would appear.

She told herself she was glad that they didn’t.

Emerald shook her head, threw the empty granola bar wrapper into the growing pile on the floor beside her bed—no time to buy a wastebasket either.

The sun had set while she’d been scrolling, but she didn’t bother to switch on the light. The light made the pile of crust-lined wrappers on the floor show too brightly. Instead, she just slipped from the messages folder to the files Torchwick had sent her. She’d read them all, one after the other, in a single sleepless night when he’d first handed her the scroll. Hunched behind a dumpster with tens of thousands of lien burning a hole in her pocket, she had read and read and read.

And she would do it again, like she had every night since.

If she’d left her best friend alone with a monster, the least she could do was look that monster in the face.

The earliest file Torchwick had was a twenty-five-year-old exchange between Marcus and someone named Vulcan. Someone whose last name, like his, was Black.

**vulcanblack:** Finally got the specs ready! Whatcha think? _[attachment: Kickass_Guns_for_Marc]_

Emerald opened the dorkily named attachment again, pulled up the holographic blueprint of the black baton that she’d seen in Marcus Black’s blood-spattered hand. She took it in her hands and twisted it so that the wire fell free and shuddered, her hands running over the firing mechanisms and retraction triggers that had become, in the past few weeks, as familiar as her own _Thief’s Respite._ There was only one difference between the glowing image in her hands and the weapon that had sliced into Mercury’s:

**marcusblack:** The fuck’s with the names?

On Emerald’s holographic copy, each of the sawed-off shotguns had a word engraved along the barrel. “Phobos” on the left, “Deimos,” on the right.

**vulcanblack:** “Fear” and “Terror” in one of Sanus’s ancient dialects. Pretty cool, right?

**marcusblack:** If they don’t say that on their own, they’re not worth the cash.

**vulcanblack:** You’re no fun.

**marcusblack:** And you’re a dweeb whose girlfriend is easy to steal.

**vulcanblack:** And you're a dumbass who's easily apprehended with a well-placed net mechanism.

Emerald had filed that away as a potential weakness but figured its applications were too narrow to actually prove effective.

**marcusblack:** Asshole.

**marcusblack:** Look, they’ll do, just leave off the names and get them done before that shit gets to your hands and makes you totally useless. I don’t wanna get caught under Minnie’s fucking heel when that happens.

**vulcanblack:** You’ll miss me, right?

**vulcanblack:** When it gets to my hands, I mean. And,,, my vitals and stuff?

Marcus never replied.

Something he and Emerald had in common, she guessed.

Whoever Marcus went to work for with that weapon did a much better job of keeping his personal messages personal, but Torchwick had managed to scrape up something else—a series of exchanges between two guys named Ross Craig and Gilt Stern. All Emerald knew about them was that they were low-level provision suppliers for the Elsinores, the syndicate Marcus had worked for before he came to Vale, that Ross could turn invisible, and that they were unprofessional enough to text each other almost constantly on the job to gossip about their client behind his back.

And that they were dead.

The first exchange was from about fifteen years ago.

**rossrocks:** dude look i got a family portrait! _[attachment: 1 image]_

**Gilt Stern:** You are going to get me killed.

_You’re not wrong, Stern,_ Emerald thought, flicking open the attachment file and staring, as she always did, for too long.

Standing on the wood-railed porch of a log cabin was something that Emerald might have thought was a family.

The right half of the photo, she was pretty sure, actually was one. A woman with jet black hair in a short, flyaway bob stood tall, wearing a full, lopsided grin that her son would inherit one day.

Even if she’d never see it.

She had Mercury’s eyes, too, a darker grey but with the same brightness, and the rebellious little hillock of hair at the back of her head hinted at the same cowlick that would plague the tiny, grey-crested bundle in her arms, years after she was gone.

Nestled against her leg was a bright-eyed husky so large that Emerald was convinced that it must have been part wolf, its snout pointed up at her face and wearing a big, trusting dog-smile.

The other half of the photo belonged to Marcus Black. He was younger. Less stubble. But his eyes were just as cold as they’d been when they’d met Emerald’s. And they were trained on Mercury.

**rossrocks:** kinda sweet yeah? marcus black finally settling down

**rossrocks:** building a cabin for a nice girl and her nice dog

**Gilt Stern:** Unless Maia’s Semblance is personality alteration, the poor girl is gravely stupid.

**Gilt Stern:** But she’s none of our business.

**rossrocks:** cmon, she’s way more fun to talk to

**Gilt Stern:** Which you shouldn’t make a habit of doing.

**rossrocks:** why not?

**Gilt Stern:** Because if Marcus Black catches you doing anything with his girlfriend that even vaguely resembles flirting, he will fill you with holes, and he will not give a single flying f*** [Gilt actually typed it out like that, with three stars, like he was Emerald at age eight] that you’re Elsinore’s nephew.

**Gilt Stern:** That’s why.

The next “family portrait” dated from a year later.

**rossrocks** : at least he’s holding the kid for once?

**Gilt Stern:** You truly are an optimist, Ross.

Emerald shared Stern’s opinion. Marcus was holding a slightly sturdier Mercury now, his fingers wrapping around the back of his head in a way that Emerald didn’t like. From the look on Maia’s face, she didn’t like it either. She was still gazing at her son, but she had to do it out of the corner of her eye—her whole body was curved away from Marcus, sheltering the dog at her side, the only figure in the picture aside from Mercury who didn’t seem to know that anything was wrong.

The next month, things got scary.

**rossrocks:** she’s gone

**Gilt Stern:** I noticed that, Ross.

**rossrocks:** dyou wanna

**rossrocks:** you know

**rossrocks:** ask him?

**Gilt Stern:** Yes, Ross, I’d love to ask the deadliest and most bad-tempered hitman on our payroll why his girlfriend is missing. I’m sure that doing so would end very well for me.

**rossrocks:** yeah i get it, i just

**rossrocks:** i hope she’s okay

**Gilt Stern:** Well, there’s no grave where I am in the backyard. That bodes well, I think.

**Gilt Stern:** Ross.

**Gilt Stern:** I hope so, too.

After that, Ross and Gilt each started taking turns babysitting Mercury while the other flew Marcus to his missions—quick runs there and back, never overnight.

_Because gods forbid the bastard leave Mercury alone with people who weren't complete monsters for more than a couple hours._

When Ross was in charge, the chat was flooded with pictures and videos of little three-year-old Mercury toddling around the cabin in sock feet, with Ross’s hand occasionally rushing into frame to pull a liquor bottle out of the way before Mercury could trip on it. When Gilt was on babysitting duty, Ross’s constant requests for updates spilled down the screen, usually to be met with, “Please, Ross, I just got him down for his nap. Do you want to wake him up with your constant buzzing? Do you?”

Usually, a photo of a tiny, scruffy-haired Mercury passed out under a quilt accompanied by a passive-aggressive, “Do you want to disturb this?” put an end to Ross’s string of texts.

When Mercury was four, the day Marcus told Ross and Gilt that his boy wouldn’t need looking after anymore, the chat had exploded.

**rossrocks:** the fuck does he mean?! merc’s just a baby!

**Gilt Stern:** I don’t know.

**Gilt Stern:** He’s a sturdy little guy, though. And I could make a sandwich at four.

**Gilt Stern:** Fenri’s a smart dog, she can sink a Beowulf with that aura. She’ll keep him out of trouble.

**Gilt Stern:** We’ll just stock them up with more sliced bread and peanut butter, and he’ll be fine. He will.

**rossrocks:** but the fuck is with marcus keeping the kid away from us! we wouldn’t hurt him!

**Gilt Stern:** Language.

**Gilt Stern:** I don’t like it either. There’s nothing we can do though, Ross. I know you think there is because you’re young, but you’re wrong. We’ll just help how we can from where we are, okay?

**rossrocks:** fuck’s sake gilt, we’re running so many bottles up to this house

**rossrocks:** okay

As the years of messages went by, and hours of Emerald’s life went by with them, Ross and Gilt started to feel, in a strange way, like the closest friends she had, though she would never meet them. In the dim twilight of her room, all three of them clustered together, years apart, in life and in death, and feared for the same boy.

**rossrocks:** finally got another picture! _[attachment: 1 image]_

Mercury, sitting down in a tall gold field of grass with his back to the camera and his arm around the dog that sat beside him, his head tilted into her fuzzy shoulder so that his hair blended with her fur. He was only a little smaller than the boy who’d first stuck his tongue out at Emerald in the health foods aisle.

**rossrocks:** really missed the little guy

**Gilt Stern:** Yeah. It’s not the same just seeing him look up when we land with Black. Did you get to talk to him?

**rossrocks:** no, it was right when marcus called me back in from the icehouse

**Gilt Stern:** Six already. I can’t believe it. He’s so much bigger!

**rossrocks:** aw do you feel old?

**Gilt Stern:** Ross, I’m about to have a grandchild.

**rossrocks:** yeah yeah you’ve mentioned that a time or fifty :)

**rossrocks:** i wanna talk to merc

**rossrocks:** let’s find a way to do it

**Gilt Stern:** You are going to get me killed.

But when Ross went through with his plan a season later, Stern went along with it, because of course he did.

**Gilt Stern:** So, how is he?

**rossrocks:** i couldn’t be visible out there for long, but

**rossrocks:** gilt he didn’t know who i was

**rossrocks:** kept yelling at me to stay away from his dog, i’d never hurt his dog, why would he think i would

**rossrocks:** i need to calm down

**Gilt Stern:** You need to calm down.

**rossrocks:** calming down

**Gilt Stern:** Start from the beginning. You’ve got time.

**rossrocks:** okay

**rossrocks:** okay

**rossrocks:** so i went out back while you were inside, and he was running around laughing with the dog and he seemed a little out of breath i guess but mostly okay. fenri must be getting old, she was moving slower

**rossrocks:** and i went visible to talk to him, i figured he’d remember me, and he kicked me in the fucking knee so hard it bruised

**rossrocks:** fenri knew me, she tried to get around him, but he grabbed her and sat down and wouldn’t let go. he growled at me, gilt. like he was a dog too, and i guess kids do that when they’re playing but he didn’t seem like he was playing

**rossrocks:** i gave him the peanuts we brought, but he wouldn’t take them out of my hand. he just kind of glared at me til i set them on the ground for him. he was eating them when i left

**rossrocks:** i don’t like any of this

**Gilt Stern:** I don’t either.

But it was the next year, around Nondescript Winter Holiday, that things really went to shit.

**ross of elsinore:** promotion, babeyyyy! aunt claudia says i’ve finally “gained an emotional maturity worthy of the elsinore name” so no more chow runs for me!!!

**ross of elsinore:** i’ll miss you though

**Gilt Stern:** I’m happy for you, Ross, truly.

**Gilt Stern:** But there’s something you should know.

**ross of elsinore:** well that’s not ominous

**Gilt Stern:** I saw Marcus kick the dog today.

Every time Emerald read that sentence, she winced, thinking of the cautious way Mercury sat on his heels when they visited the strays in the junkyard. The way he smiled at the dogs when they passed but never, ever reached for them.

_Wasn’t the first time he made me kill a dog._

**ross of elsinore:** oh gods

**ross of elsinore:** fuck

**Gilt Stern:** I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you. There’s nothing either of us can do about it. You go enjoy your holidays.

**Gilt Stern:** I just couldn’t sit with it. I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.

**ross of elsinore** : no

**ross of elsinore:** no fuck that actually

**ross of elsinore:** gimme a minute

**Gilt Stern:** Ross, what are you doing?

**ross of elsinore:** signing on for some more chow runs, buddy

**ross of elsinore:** fuck the promotion

**ross of elsinore:** i’m keeping an eye on that bastard

**Gilt Stern:** Thank you.

**Gilt Stern:** You’re a good man, Ross.

**Gilt Stern:** You’ve gained an emotional maturity worthy of the Elsinore name.

**ross of elsinore:** oh shush stern you’re making me blush :)

Over the next eighteen months, the texts grew more and more frantic.

“kid’s limping again”

“The booze smell is getting worse.”

“what do we do?”

“I don’t know.”

Over and over, the same conversation.

Until everything snapped.

**ross of elsinore:** promise you won’t be mad

**Gilt Stern:** Based on that introduction alone, I can make no such promise in good faith.

**ross of elsinore:** point taken. you know how marcus seemed… just more today?

**Gilt Stern:** He’d had a lot to drink, yes. And he was handling it poorly.

**ross of elsinore:** i got nervous for merc, so while you two were stocking the pantry, i went inviz and snuck upstairs to check on him

**Gilt Stern:** Ross, you know that’s not safe.

**ross of elsinore:** gilt it’s so much worse than we thought

**Gilt Stern:** What did you see?

**ross of elsinore:** the kid was asleep. he was curled up in this tiny little ball.

**ross of elsinore:** gilt he’s so tiny

**ross of elsinore:** fenri was all curled around him at least, but

**ross of elsinore:** bruises. all over his face. around his fucking throat, gilt.

**ross of elsinore:** for the love of gods, he’s eight years old, and his hands, they were bandaged, but there was blood

**ross of elsinore:** there was a lot of blood, and it looked like he’d bandaged it himself. like that’s something he knows how to do

Emerald had let out a quiet choking noise the first time she’d read that.

_You know I actually held my hands out for him to do it?_

**Gilt Stern:** Brothers.

**Gilt Stern:** That poor boy.

**ross of elsinore:** we have to do something

**ross of elsinore:** and don’t you dare start in with that shit about how there’s nothing we can do, i know that, and i don’t care, we’re doing something

**Gilt Stern:** Yes. We are.

Emerald’s scroll rang, and before she could throw it aside, she saw that the caller wasn’t Daily, but Torchwick. She picked up.

“Yeah?”

“Gods, kid, you sound like you haven’t slept in a week.”

“Well, I’ve had a lot of interesting reading to do.”

“You learning anything?”

“Just that Marcus Black needs a bullet in his brain even more than I thought he did,” Emerald grumbled.

Torchwick sighed. “You know, I was hoping for, ‘That going off half-cocked with a bunch of good intentions is a great way to get killed.’”

Emerald rolled her eyes.

“I can hear you doing that through the phone, Sustrai, and I don’t appreciate it,” Torchwick said. “Anyway, you’re gonna wanna keep that lesson in mind for what I’m about to say.”

With a shiver of unease, Emerald rolled over onto her stomach, frowning down at her scroll. “Yeah?”

“The Tabards aren’t holding their usual criminal get-together next week. Makes sense, after everything that’s happened. Honestly, it was kind of a long shot that they’d hold it at all.”

The horrible sinking feeling in Emerald’s chest made her feel dizzy. “Mercury…”

“Is just gonna have to hold out a little longer,” Torchwick said. “I think I can get them to agree to a meeting with me in the next month or so, and then we can go through with our plan just fine provided we make some modifications to maintain our alibis, okay Sippy Cup?”

_“No.”_ After weeks of a floating, hollow feeling, the crackle of rage in Emerald’s chest surprised her. “You betted my best friend’s life on a _long shot?_ No. No, that’s not fucking okay.”

Torchwick had given her one thin string of hope that she could fix this. That she could pull Mercury through to the other side of the window like she should have in the first place, and he’d calmly snipped through it right in front of her.

“Look, kid, just breathe for a minute, don’t do anything stu—” Emerald hung up and flung her scroll at the wall. It hit with a feeble little clicking noise, and she ground her teeth together so hard that it hurt. Mercury didn’t have another month to spare. Mercury didn’t have a crime boss telling him to stay calm or a door that locked or a Semblance that could let him escape from the monster that was shut away with him, and Emerald didn’t deserve those things either, not when she’d left him that way.

She was about to give in and let out the frustrated scream that was building in her chest when a soft knock sounded at the door. With the scream still in her throat, she stomped across the room and threw open the door.

“What!” she snapped before it was even fully ajar, but then she froze.

Standing in front of her was Daily, alone, with a small box of green-frosted cupcakes in his hands and an uncertain look on his face. His ear switched nervously back at the harshness in her voice.

His own was muted. “I… I wanted to bring you a birthday cake.” Gods, what day was it? It couldn’t be August already. When had it become August?

He looked down at the box in his hands, and Emerald, following his gaze, realized that he must have made that lumpy, too-thick frosting himself.

“I know it probably won’t be as good as…” Daily trailed off, looking away.

_As what Merc would make._ With his ear flicked down and his eyes watering, Daily looked as crushed as she felt.

Emerald found herself opening the door wide enough for him to come in. “How did you find me?”

“I… may have spent a considerable amount of time in the Print Records Building,” said Daily, slipping past her and setting the box on the counter. “It’s surprisingly useful for non-bank-heist activities. And—and then I burned the files so nobody else could find us.”

And the scream was still there in Emerald’s trachea, trying to break free. She did her best to swallow it, but the mention of the heist, the thought of Mercury’s hand squeezing her shoulder one last time as he ran away with an easy grin that she might never see again, made it grow.

“Nice,” said Emerald, and she could hear the strain in her own voice. “Uh, how’s Lav doing?”

Daily looked down again. “She… she’s hurt. I understand that you probably have reasons to stay away, but… Emerald, you’re not the only one who’s afraid of being abandoned.”

_I’m not anymore._

_I’m the one who abandons people, now._

Emerald couldn’t make herself say that she was sorry. She couldn’t make herself say anything.

Daily couldn’t seem to, either. Instead, he fished around in the kangaroo pocket of his jacket—Mercury’s old jacket, passed down, gods, it was like he followed her everywhere, like he knew she wasn’t moving fast enough—and pulled out a lighter and a single, flimsy red candle, which he stuck into the cupcake nearest Emerald.

“Happy sixteenth,” he said, with a small, forced smile.

With a few jittering flicks of his thumb, he lit it, and Emerald watched the tiny bead of flame swell into life, licking up into the air and dwindling at the slightest breeze. It was so fragile. Even the smallest gust of wind, and the light of it would be gone forever. If Emerald looked away for even a second, it could be dead by the time she looked back.

The pressure in her chest hardened.

It wasn’t even her birthday. It was Mercury’s.

“Emerald, if there’s anything you need to talk—”

“Get out.” Daily flinched at the growl in her voice.

Good.

Emerald wasn’t safe. It was good that he knew that.

That she didn’t deserve to sit around eating cake and crying about her problems while her best friend was probably being beaten to death.

“What?” The lighter dropped from Daily’s fingers.

“Get. _Out,”_ Emerald paced around the counter and leaned over Daily, forcing him to remember that she was taller than he was. She narrowed her eyes to slits.

Daily’s jaw wobbled as he set it, but his hands closed into fists. “No. You’re my friend and you’re hurt. I’m not just going to leave—”

And at that, something inside of Emerald snapped.

_“Yes, you are!”_ Her Semblance flared, making her shine from within with molten gold light, like the sun on Rex Aurum’s sword. _“Just like I did!”_

Daily backed up a step, his eyes going wide with hurt and fear, his hand straying to the jagged ridge where his right ear had once been.

_“Go.”_

With tears in his eyes and a closing of the door that was far, far gentler than Emerald deserved, Daily did.

When Emerald turned back around, the candle was still burning.

She watched it until it burned out.

Its imprint was still flickering over her eyes as she picked up her scroll again and hit “Play” on the last file in Torchwick’s folder, an audio recording from Gilt Stern to his daughter the night before he and Ross had made their move.

_“Hi there, Fennel,”_ Stern’s voice was worn and gruff and strangely kind. _“I know you and the little pillbug are probably all snug in bed by now, but I don’t know if I’ll get the chance to call again. I hope I will, but I probably won’t.”_

Emerald crossed to the little closet alcove beside her bed and pulled out the outfit she’d bought for hers and Torchwick’s mission—a pretty green pantsuit that made her look more ready for a job interview than a heist.

As she shrugged it on, Gilt kept talking. _“Your old man’s never been much of a do-gooder, Fenny. I know that. But I’d like to think that I’ve always done right by you. And even if I haven’t, you’ve grown into such a strong, beautiful woman. I’m proud of you.”_

Emerald tucked her necklace—the two halves of the jade cat now hung on either side of Meleager’s bullet—under her shirt collar. The person she needed to be for this job wouldn’t wear it, but Emerald would never take it off. Its weight was a promise she’d made.

_“And now I have to do right by someone else. I wish to gods there was someone else who could do it. Or who would do it. But it’s just me and Ross. Yeah, I know,_ Ross. _He’s a pretty good kid once you get to know him. The thing is, Fenny, Ross and I are going to try to do something that we probably can’t do.”_

Emerald slung _Thief’s Respite_ around her waist, checking to be sure both revolvers were fully loaded.

_“But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. I’ve turned a blind eye to too many bad things in my life, Fenny, and I’m ashamed of that. So I’m not letting it go. Not this time. This time, I’m going to look it in the eye and try to stop it.”_

Emerald tied her hair back, squared her jaw.

Gilt let out a quick, morbid chuckle. _“And who knows? Maybe I will. Maybe you’ll wind up with a much younger brother on your hands. But I doubt it. The point is, if I don’t call you again, don’t buy whatever crap old Claudia feeds you. Don’t let her tell you I cheated her out of money, or that I just wandered off on the job and got eaten by Beowulves. Just know—please, please, know—that your old man went out doing his damnedest to do the right thing.”_

Emerald shoved her shower supplies and her dirty clothes into a bag, zipped it up tight. She’d need luggage to sell this role.

_“Like I said, Fenny, I’ll always be proud of you. I hope you can be proud of me.”_

She slung the bag over her shoulder.

_“Kiss that little grub of yours on the head for me. I love you. Good-bye.”_

Emerald picked up her scroll on her way to the counter and shunted the box of cupcakes into the trash. On impulse, she picked up the lighter and slid it into her pocket. She looked down, for a moment, at the audio file on the screen, at the voice of the man who had, without knowing it, bought every bit of happiness she’d known for the past seven years with his life.

Gilt Stern and Ross Craig had died believing that they’d failed. But if they hadn’t tried—if they hadn’t risked and lost everything for an angry, wounded boy who was none of their business—Marcus Black would never have left the mountains. Emerald would never have met Mercury. The person she was today, the girl who could stand tall and take a punch and make her enemies fall silent when she spoke, existed because of them.

And she was going to finish what they’d started. For them. For Mercury. For herself.

Or she would follow in their footsteps, and die trying.

She had the layouts to the Tabard’s headquarters on her scroll, courtesy of Torchwick. She had her weapons. She had her Semblance.

To get the Skeleton Key, she wouldn’t need anything else.

Emerald couldn’t wait any longer for the flame of her best friend’s life to burn out.

She was going to do this herself.

* * *

“One-hundred fifty-three,” Mercury muttered, straightening his arms and pushing himself up into a plank before lowering back down into Push-Up Number One-Hundred Fifty-Four.

He'd found, if he was always moving, that he didn't have so much room to think, and that was good.

Before he could rise back up, though, a chill crept along his spine, and he rolled up into a crouch, doubling up his fists and spinning to face the Seer Grimm where it hovered in the doorway. Marcus was off on a two-day mission, and that, Mercury realized with a flicker of anger, probably meant—

“Hazel, I don’t want your fucking pity—”

“Oh, don’t worry, young man.” The Grimm drifted closer to Mercury, and he tensed, holding back a shudder. “You’ll get none from me.”

Not Hazel. Watts.

“What do you want?” Mercury said. He kept his voice hard.

“Oh, nothing in particular,” said Watts greasily. “I’m here to talk about what _you_ want.”

“Is that right.” Mercury didn’t even try to keep the skepticism out of his words.

Watts chuckled. “You’re no doubt aware, Mercury, that your father has been one of our most valuable assets for the better part of a decade, yes?”

“Sure.” Mercury shrugged.

“And that value hinges on his Semblance,” said Watts. “Marcus is an excellent fighter, yes, but the power of cutting out his opponent’s very center with a touch is simply such a powerful advantage that—” Watts smirked at Mercury—“well. I’m sure I don’t need to tell _you_ that.”

The empty place in Mercury’s chest throbbed, and he bit down a snarl.

“But it’s… rather vexing that he can only hold one at a time. And he refuses, at the moment, to let go of yours,” Watts went on. “Which means that he, for all intents and purposes, lacks a Semblance just as completely as you do. We’ve had some new blood enter our organization recently, and it has, for lack of a less repetitive term, _bad_ blood with your father. He did us a great service when you were very young, but the fact remains that things would run much more smoothly around here if we could replace him, and frankly, his contributions to the Nondescript Winter Holiday office gift swap have always been sorely disappointing.

“Now, if only there existed some young, strong person with a well-honed skillset that might allow him to take Marcus’s place…” Watts’s eyes were fixed on Mercury’s face. “There would be a trial period, of course. You’d need to prove your efficacy. But after that, your father’s place would be yours, and we could… tidy him away discreetly. Perhaps, we’d even be able to induce him to return your Semblance to you.”  
  
Mercury hated the hitch in his own breath, how obvious his desperation would be to Watts.

“I don’t expect an answer now,” Watts said. “But I expect one soon.”

Before Mercury could gather himself enough to say anything, the Seer Grimm was gone, taking Watts with it.

Gods.

He could make it end. He could run free without putting Emerald in danger. He could phase again. He could go the rest of his days without ever smelling whiskey.

He could have his life back.

Wait.

No.

He could have Marcus’s life. Another hired killer with a corpse-white aura.

And the worst part was, he’d be good at it. He knew that now. He crossed his arms to keep himself from looking down at his hands, from remembering the blood that had stained them. That had soaked in until it looked like his skin was rusting.

The emptiness in his chest would grow. His body would go through the motions, just like Marcus had taught it to. Every day he’d become less like Maura Ellwood and Vardan Roosevelt and more like the monster who had made them suffer.

And he _wanted_ it.

Marcus—his training, his fists, his liquor-stained words—was crushing him into the dust, and Mercury didn’t have the power to phase free of him anymore. He was trapped like a bug, and the only way to escape Marcus now was to get as strong as he was. As cold.

Unless.

There was one last thing he hadn’t tried.

_Em, I’m sorry about this._

He’d need to leave a clear enough trail that Marcus wouldn’t have any reason to seek her out, but…

Mercury barely knew what he was doing when he broke into a run, scrambling to the kitchen and grabbing the biggest knife he could find. He shoved it through his belt and crossed to the metal door of the garage, yanking hard on the handle. Damnit. Locked up tight. No way to get to _Talaria._

The knife would have to do. He grabbed what food he could from the kitchen and rushed back to his room, throwing it all in a duffel bag with his first-aid kit and tossing it on over his shoulder.

_I’m sorry I can’t wait for you._

He needed to get to somewhere that he could look at the knife in his belt and forget that he knew how it felt when it struck ribs.

He had no idea where the fuck that was, just that it sure as hell wasn’t here.

Mercury marched back to the dining room, heaved up a chair, and, with a burst of aura, threw it hard at the newly repaired window. At the sound of the glass shattering, he flinched. Alarms split the air, stabbing into Mercury’s ears. Marcus must have upgraded the security.

Wherever he was now, he’d know Mercury was gone.

The clock was ticking.

Mercury jumped through the window and back out into the world.

He hit the ground running.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can safely say when I started writing this story that I did not expect half a chapter of it to become a chatfic, but here we are! It was fun to change things up a little bit.
> 
> Annnnd tune in next week for *checks outline* Oof. Yikes. Seriously, we're *there* already? Jesus. Here we go, I guess.
> 
> Anyway, as always, thank you so much for reading and I'm excited to hear what you think in the comments :D


	24. This Makes You Weak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emerald and Mercury collectively have the worst sixteenth birthday imaginable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Hi guys. This is the darkest chapter of this story. By a lot. I've wrestled with it for a long time, and it's just... rough. There's a lot of upsetting violence ahead, pretty much all of it perpetrated against our two favorite murder kids, and I apologize in advance (I also apologize for letting this atrocity somehow end up 12k words long). I'm going to put a recap in the closing AN for anyone who needs to nope out of this one. I guess the good news is that it's never going to get worse than this? Annnnd now for a content warning.
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> cw: Graphic depictions of violence, broken bones, child abuse, so much profanity, and something that if I list it here will make it... relatively clear what happens in this chapter, so I'm going to do what I did with the chapter with the Marcus POVs and put it lower down so that those who want to scroll past and read at their own risk without spoilers can.
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Mercury spent his sixteenth birthday alone in a cave in the middle of nowhere, cooking a squirrel over a fire fueled by dried animal shit, which, if he was keeping track right, made it only his eighth worst birthday ever, at least that he could remember.

Lucky him.

He’d left as clear a trail as possible on his way out of Vale—he didn’t want Marcus resorting to sleuthing, because sleuthing would serve Emerald up to him on a silver platter within days. So he’d booked a ticket to Vacuo under the most transparent pseudonym in his repertoire and boarded the train completely undisguised, hoping that Marcus would underestimate him enough to assume that he was stupid enough to do that in earnest.

The train route from Vale to Vacuo looped up to the north for miles on miles to get close enough to the coast to navigate the narrow strait between the ocean and the devastation around Mountain Glenn. Right as the track had started to arc toward the south again, Mercury had slipped between the cars and launched himself out into the forest. The landing had sent a scream of pain through his ribs, even through his aura, but he’d managed to stumble to his feet and start making tracks into the woods.

His wounds from the day he’d lost his Semblance weren’t healing like they were supposed to. Weeks later, his shoulder still smarted. His ribs still throbbed. His aura still made him stronger in fights, still let him twist and dodge like he needed to. But it felt colder. Like it didn’t seem to care when he was injured.

He wondered if it was pissed at him for letting it get ripped in half.

He was pissed at himself, so maybe that tracked.

Or maybe, white and plain as it was, it was like Marcus now. It wanted him to be strong. It didn’t care if he got hurt.

That thought sent a shiver down Mercury’s spine, even with the fire burning in front of him and the late summer air hanging heavy and warm around him. He’d been making his way steadily northward for the past week, trying to put as much distance between himself and the train as possible.

Marcus would probably have figured out, by now, that Mercury wasn’t among the arrivals at the Vacuo border, and the chances that he would be moving by bullhead were good, which meant Mercury’s best bet was to get outside of an easy on-foot search radius and then hunker down somewhere beyond a bird’s-eye view long enough for Marcus to lose the trail and start checking the surrounding settlements. Mercury would avoid those, stick to the woods, hunt what he could. In a month or so, he might hit a port where he could stow away to Solitas—the last continent where Marcus would expect to find a fugitive.

_It’s the barren ass-end of the earth, boy, nothing but soldiers and snobs._

After that—

Mercury didn’t know.

He could find work, he guessed. He was strong, and Atlas was always looking for manual labor. The rest of his skillset… if he ended up using it anyway, then there wasn’t any point in running away in the first place.

He guessed he could do pretty well as a pickpocket. Not as well as when he’d had his Semblance, but after how long he’d been friends with Emerald, he’d picked up some…

Emerald.

His chest ached, then, not the hollowness of his missing Semblance, but another pain that was somehow equally unbearable.

When would he see her again?

 _Would_ he see her again?

He didn’t know how. With Marcus stationed in Vale and his contacts running all through the criminal underworld, Mercury didn’t know how he could get back. And once he crossed the ocean…

The idea of Emerald being a literal world away from him made something under his ribs clench.

If she was looking for him—

_She shouldn’t be looking for me._

But Emerald had said she would come back for him, and Emerald kept her promises. If she came back to the house and he wasn’t there, what would she think had happened? Would she be able to figure out that he’d run away?

He reached down to the little hidden pocket he’d stitched into the cuff of his pants and pulled out his tiny stone wolf. Its ears were worn and rounded from how many years he’d spent fidgeting with it, and its nose had gone stubby.

He let himself imagine that—Emerald figuring it out—for a moment, since Marcus wasn’t here to stop him—turning a corner in the streets of Mantle to see Emerald standing there on the sidewalk like she’d been waiting for him, a knowing little smile on her face because she’d found him, because she would always find him, even where Marcus couldn’t. And he’d open his arms, and she’d run into them, and that would be that.

Mercury fought down the stinging behind his eyes and shook his head. Too many fairy tales.

If Marcus couldn’t track him down, then Emerald sure as hell wouldn’t be able to. No, she’d think that Marcus had killed him.

And he knew Em too well not to know that she’d absolutely do something stupid about it.

But how to get back to Vale without Marcus finding him? Without leading him straight to Emerald? The walls of the cave seemed to shrink in around him. He tore another bite out of the squirrel and tried not to shiver.

Even miles and miles away from the cold white box of Marcus Black’s house, Mercury still felt trapped, still frozen like he had been right before Marcus had lunged through the wall and seized him.

Every time he thought he knew what to do, a hundred new reasons popped up for why that was a stupid fucking idea that was going to get him hurt. For why he deserved to get hurt for having such a stupid fucking idea.

The fire was starting to burn low, and Mercury forced down the last of the tough, stringy squirrel meat.

And then, far, far away but drawing slowly closer, was the old familiar hum of a bullhead coming in for a landing.

Even when he’d been tiny, even under the stupid, headstrong hope that had always sent him sprinting out into the yard to see Dad land, that sound had set off a quiet rattle of fear in his chest, because when Mercury heard it, nine times out of ten, there was a beating on the way.

He didn’t see why this time would be any different.

Mercury kicked out the fire and tucked the wolf away.

Leaving himself in darkness, he drew his knife.

* * *

With her heart in her throat, Emerald rang the bell on the front desk, her Semblance raised like a shield.

If she could get this right, she might see Mercury tomorrow.

She was going to get this right.

The man who appeared at the counter in the lush, marble-floored lobby of the Tabard Hotel was slim and bespectacled, and Emerald recognized him easily from the mission files Torchwick talked her through: Duncan Clark, one of the Alyson Rothschild’s two lieutenants who had taken over management of the Tabard gang since her death.

She also knew that those long sleeves concealed an armory’s worth of miniscule, Dust-lined throwing stars, and that his glasses, in addition to correcting his astigmatism, boasted a heat-seeking guidance system designed by Rothschild’s third husband that meant he almost never missed.

 _Close with Rothschild’s younger daughter, who’s MIA right now,_ Emerald recited to herself from Torchwick’s notes. _No sense of whimsy. A real drag._

She wasn’t sure how helpful that particular insight would be, but she guessed she could appreciate Torchwick’s commitment to ruthlessly judging every last one of his associates.

More useful was, _The pencil-pushing fuck will_ know _if you are lying. He asks you a question, you answer it_ carefully. _I still don’t know if it’s his Semblance or not—gods, that bugs me. Bastard hasn’t got any kind of tell. But every time I’ve fibbed to the guy, he’s known, and I am a skilled fibber. His pals will believe whatever he says like it comes straight from the God of Light._

“Good evening,” Clark’s voice was reedy and thin. “What would you like from the Tabard Hotel, ma’am?”

“A room for the night,” said Emerald, and that was true. “With a view of the main road, if you’ve got any vacancies left.”

Where her room was didn’t matter, but mentioning it would throw him off of her earlier lie of omission. She hoped. And she did like watching the cars go by, so it was true enough.

“None left on that side of the building,” said Clark. “You’ll have to make do with something else, Miss…?”

“Veridian, for now,” said Emerald, handing over the credit card that Torchwick had set her up with. She bounced a little on the balls of her feet, making the illusion of a diamond ring that shone on her left hand flare in the light. “And in that case, any vacancy you have will be fine.”

She was pretty proud of the twist she’d pulled off with that _for now,_ as Clark accepted her card without a sign of suspicion.

Her Semblance ensured that Clark saw a woman ten years her senior, with bright green eyes and jet black hair in a shorter style. Her voice was a little deeper, her shoulders broader. June Veridian, invented on the spot, glowed with a happiness that to Emerald felt as far away as the moon.

“We have an opening on the fourth floor,” said Clark. “Due to the late notice, the rates will be a bit high but—”

“I don’t care,” said Emerald, her impatience getting the better of her, her Semblance narrowly turning the bitten-out interruption into a carefree dismissal. She gave a casual wave of her hand, shrugged a little.

Clark scowled, but he scanned the card and handed it back to her along with a key—a standard metal one, a gesture of goodwill from the Tabards to their clients, giving them doors that the Skeleton Key couldn’t unlock.

 _Which is horse-pucky,_ Torchwick had added. _You expect me to believe they don’t also keep keys to every room in that fancy rat trap? No. The only reason they keep the place running now that they make all their money from heists is because they want a leg up on the competition, and they know the competition needs a place to hide from the cops every now and then._

“The best of luck on your pilgrimage,” said Clark. Thank gods Torchwick’s code phrases were up to date.

If Emerald wanted to code herself as someone In The Know, who might need the Tabards’ resources at her disposal to keep the police off her trail, she would have replied, _The rains are heavy in April._

But Emerald wanted to look like a clueless, cheerful woman who was just stopping through for the night on her way to something better, so she assumed a puzzled expression for a second before laughing and saying, “Thanks! You’re too sweet!”

She gave Clark a wave as she hurried around his desk and made her way to the elevator. She’d ditched her usual fingerless gloves. They were lying on her nightstand, still smeared with Mercury’s blood. In their place, she wore a pair of thin black ones that covered her fingers entirely and wouldn’t leave her prints all over everything she touched.

When she got to her room, Emerald unpacked as hastily as she could, throwing her toiletries in the shower and hanging her clothes in the closet, settling in like someone who was planning to stay the night. Someone who had a purpose here other than stealing the exact thing that this entire building was intended to protect.

The scrolls that had access to the Skeleton Key were all locked up on the building’s highest floor. No stairs led up to the room, and only the fingerprints of the Tabards’ highest members would let the elevator access it. How the Tabards got back down from the attic to the ground level, Torchwick didn’t know. His best guess was a hidden elevator or some kind of tunnel system. Either way, there was no known exit point where anyone could ambush the Tabards and take their scrolls.

For the average crook, it would be a tricky job.

For Emerald, who could hop on the elevator unseen with the first Tabard to step into it, then pick their pockets and vanish in the exit tunnels, it should be a piece of cake. She’d be back in this room, in her Semblance-made disguise, by the time they locked down the hotel. The residents were always the Tabards’ prime suspects, but Emerald’s Semblance would ensure they’d never find the scroll, even if it was in plain sight.

Sure, the plan leaned a little heavily on her Semblance, but she’d been getting stronger with it over the past few years. And this was for Mercury. It didn’t matter how bad of a headache she got if she could just get the job done, and she _would_ get the job done. She always would, for him.

She’d gotten lucky in her room assignment—only three doors down from the staff elevator's main entrance. All she had to do was keep an ear out, and be ready to strike.

Her chance didn’t come until an hour before midnight.

Her ear was pressed to the door, so it was easy to make out the sound of footsteps moving past it. Stretching her Semblance out into the hall beyond her vision, she willed whatever mind was passing to see her door staying safely shut, to be deaf to the turning of the knob and the clicking of the lock.

Slipping out into the hallway, she spied a broad-shouldered man nearly seven feet tall with ruddy hair and a massive club swinging at his side.

 _Gilroy Miller,_ Torchwick’s files supplied. _Aly’s favorite hired muscle. Tells jokes so filthy your ears catch fire, but he’s really a hoot to have around. He and Aly were like… siblings, I guess, always swapping gross limericks and stuff. He even named his daughter after her._

Torchwick had gripped his cane for a second before he went on, had lit a new cigar.

_If you piss him off, he’ll go for the kneecaps. Believe me, I know._

Emerald crept down the hall after him, giving the club a wide berth, calming the jagged beating of her heart with the fact that he couldn’t go for the kneecaps if he couldn’t see them.

Miller pressed the up button on the elevator, making it whir as it scanned his thumb, but before the doors could open, a second figure came bustling around the corner. Emerald barely reached out with her Semblance in time. The slight buzzing feeling behind her eyes was unpleasant, but she could manage it.

She would manage it.

“Dad!” The girl, with her soft brown eyes and velvety horse ears, must have taken after her mother. She had a long spear that glowed red at the point in her hand. “I told you not to go without me!”

 _Little Sonny’s very gung-ho,_ Torchwick had said, _and an absolute pain in the ass to keep still. You know I had to babysit her once, and…_

There had been a lot of rambling after that, and it had ended with. _You and her might get along real well, Sustrai, if you weren’t in such a pissy mood._

The elevator doors dinged open, and Miller and his daughter stepped through. Emerald slipped in after them, holding in her breath as she wedged herself into a corner of the stuffy metal box. Miller alone took up nearly half the elevator, and if he or his daughter bumped into her, it was all over. Just a few seconds, and they’d be moving up.

The doors had just started to slide closed when Clark’s reedy voice called out, “Wait for me, you reprobates!”

“What?” snickered Sonny. “Were you running late because you almost forgot your thesaurus?”

“Good one, sweetie,” said Miller, offering her a high five. Emerald’s heart sank as Clark elbowed his way into the elevator, and she shrank back further, narrowly avoiding one of his jabs. As her Semblance reached out and took hold of his mind as well, the pressure behind her eyes sharpened into a pain that started boring steadily into the inside of her skull.

Emerald kept her eyes open, her body still, her Semblance running.

This was nothing to what Mercury was probably going through right now. Even as sweat started to break out on her forehead, she told herself that she would hold this as long as it took. The elevator crawled slowly, too slowly, upwards, and when the doors finally opened again, it was all Emerald could do to keep pressed into her corner while the Tabards filed out past her, then stagger after them.

The uppermost floor of the hotel was stone-lined and brightly lit, with a darkly gleaming metal safe at its center.

Emerald blinked back the starbursts of pain that obscured her vision and trudged forward. Not much longer now…

“We get to hit the Xiongs tonight, right?” asked Sonny.

Miller grinned. “Serves them right for catering to that dandy before us.”

“With tensions running high after the… the incident, is that really wise?” Clark put in.

Emerald took a few more steps forward, hovering behind the trio as they looked at the safe.

 _Grab your key._ The pain was now a railroad spike driving straight between Emerald’s eyebrows. _Cut the fucking banter and just grab your stupid key._

“Also, I told Melanie at school last week that if she pulled my ear one more time, I’d empty her college fund,” Sonny said, horse ears flicking. She had the same bitterness in her voice that there was in Lavender’s when people touched her horns without asking.

Miller set a hand on her shoulder. “Well, I can’t have people thinking my little girl doesn’t make good on her threats. Clark, whatever you’re about to say can go stuff itself. We’re hitting the Xiongs.”

Clark let out an offended sniff but said nothing. Emerald gnashed her teeth together as tears burned in her eyes.

 _For Merc,_ she told herself. _For Merc._

It was all she could do not to collapse with relief when Clark stretched out his hand and pressed his thumb to the print reader on the front of the safe.

_Focus, Sustrai. You’ve still got more job to do._

From a glowing drawer inside the safe, each of the Tabards took a scroll. Each slid their scroll into a pocket that zipped and locked.

Emerald drew half of _Thief’s Respite,_ flicked it into kama configuration. This was a case where slitting the pocket itself would be far easier than prying the zipper open.

“Tunnels?” asked Sonny, twirling her spear.

“Tunnels,” said Miller, and he pressed his hand to a console on the inside of the safe. In a glow and whir of hard-light Dust, the bottom of the safe fell away into a metal staircase that delved down into darkness.

 _Of course._ The Tabards kept the route to the keys as tightly locked up as the keys themselves, in a place where they’d never have to double back down the elevator. Not bad.

They began the descent, footsteps clanking, and Emerald followed, spinning out of the way of Miller’s arm as he reached back to close the door behind them. Her head felt like it was going to cleave in two, and she was choking on tears, but she pressed onward, her hands clenching the steel railing of the staircase as the first few steps collapsed back up into the floor of the safe behind her.

She couldn’t make out Miller and Sonny’s jibes anymore, or Clark’s put-upon huffs. The pain in her head was world-crushing, a slowly building, merciless pressure that felt like it might split her skull in half at any moment.

 _For Merc,_ she thought again through the screen of tears. _For Merc._

She nearly stumbled and fell when she reached the bottom of the staircase, her foot expecting another drop and finding only solid ground. She shook her head and dashed the tears out of her eyes. She couldn’t break now, couldn’t be weak, Mercury couldn’t afford it.

He would do this for her, she was sure he would, and if she failed—

She wouldn’t fail.

The girl who cut down Rex Aurum didn’t fucking fail.

Emerald took stock of her surroundings, tried to distance herself from the pain. The Tabards had emerged into a wide earthen cavern somewhere deep beneath the ground, with a warren of tunnels radiating out through the walls.

She’d made it.

Take a scroll, slip into one of those tunnels, job done.

Fuck all the clever stuff about maintaining her cover story. She didn’t have enough aura left to carry it off anyway. No, she’d take the key and run straight to Mercury.

She’d run _home._

Emerald slipped toward Sonny, her kama flipped blade-up as she angled for the cargo pocket high on her right leg. She was the youngest, and the least well-armed. She’d be, hopefully, the easiest to rob.

With a flick of her wrist, Emerald sank the tip of the blade into the underside of the pocket and sliced backward, every piston in her mind firing and steaming— _don’t let the blade touch her, don’t let it pull, don’t let her see me don’t let them see me—_ and yet she missed one thing.

She zipped open the pocket with her blade smoothly and silently. Her Semblance held. But she forgot, in the drumming, relentless pain, to stick her hand out and catch the scroll as it fell. It hit the ground with a quiet clicking sound that she didn’t quite think to cancel. Her Semblance rushed out to make the Tabards look away from the noise, exerting just a little more effort to make them hear the sound of pebbles falling on the other side of the cavern, she was so close, if she could just stretch a little farther—

Green light flashed over her fingers, in front of her eyes.

Her aura was broken.

All three of the Tabards whirled, weapons raised and eyes widening as they took in the trembling, tear-stained girl hunched in front of them.

Emerald didn’t have any backup plans, any clever excuses. She didn’t have any strength left to fight with. She didn’t even have any snarky little line of gallows humor to keep despair at bay. She just sank to her knees in the dirt in front of them and kept trembling.

She’d been too weak. Too stupid. She should have held out longer, should have fought the pain.

But she’d failed.

She’d failed Mercury.

She wasn’t the girl who’d laid the Golds low anymore. She wasn’t anything.

Miller sighed. “Well, shit.” He looked at his daughter. “Kiddo, I was hoping it would be a couple more years before you had to see something like this. Clark, her arms?”

Emerald was barely conscious of boney hands locking around her arms from behind and dragging her to her feet.

“Wait,” Sonny was saying. “She’s like… my age. She doesn’t look dangerous.”

“Sweetie, how pissed would you be, exactly, if somebody told you that _you_ looked too young to be dangerous?”

Sonny frowned, her mouth pressing into a line. Emerald hung limply in Clark’s grasp, not struggling. Whatever it was that Miller was going to do to her couldn’t be as bad as what Mercury’s father had done to him.

As what Emerald had failed to save him from.

Miller drew the club from his side and took a step forward. Emerald’s legs twitched backwards. Even though her mind was too numb to be afraid, that didn’t seem to extend to her body.

“All right, kid,” said Miller, stooping down to try to look her in the eye. Emerald did him the favor of looking up to meet his gaze. She didn’t want him trying to grab her attention by force. “Are you one of Torchwick’s?”

After a moment’s deliberation, Emerald shook her head. She wasn’t one of Torchwick’s goons. She was an independent fuck-up.

“If he made you any promises, he’ll forget them now that your little plan has failed,” Clark said behind her. “You’ll get no benefit from protecting him.”

“No,” Emerald said, struggling to speak through the residue of that knife-like pain in her head. “I’m here for myself. For somebody I—” she cut herself off.

“What?” asked Miller. “You just want our Key so you can break into your boyfriend’s house?”

Emerald narrowed her eyes, a tiny spark of humor coming back to her. “Yes, actually.”

Miller cast an incredulous glance at Clark. Out of the corner of her eye, Emerald could see him nod.

Miller snorted. “That’s a hell of a commitment to your hormones, I’ll give you that. But—” he swung the club into the palm of his hand, and Emerald wished that the sound didn’t make her wince—“you’re gonna have to call in a rain-check for your date. And an ambulance.”

Sonny spoke up. “What—what are you going to do to her?”

“It’s a first offense,” said Miller matter-of-factly, “and she’s young. So just kneecaps.”

“Just?” Sonny and Emerald said at the same time. Emerald pressed her mouth shut. She hadn’t earned that little flutter of panic in her chest.

She wasn’t worth being scared for.

“This girl—” Clark’s fingers dug painfully into Emerald’s arms—“is trying to exploit us while we’re weak. She saw that your Aunt Aly and Brunnhilde were dead, and she decided to try to take advantage of us. We are not in the habit of letting people who cross us go unscathed. Especially now, when every lowlife in this city is looking to see us fail.” Clark’s reedy voice turned into a growl. “She’s lucky we’re letting her go this easily.”

At the mention of her dead namesake, Sonny’s face had gone hard.

Miller looked down into Emerald’s face again. “Is there anything you wanna tell me before I do this, kid? Any information? I’ll go easier.”

Emerald started to shake her head, and even that motion made her dizzy with pain. She stopped, one last pitiful throw of the dice occurring to her.

“Do you want Marcus Black dead?” she asked.

Miller froze, like he didn’t trust himself to answer.

Emerald pressed on. “If you give me the Key, I can make that happen. I _will_ make that happen. Every crook in this city deserves that, right?”

“That’s a fuck of a risk for us to take,” Miller said, but he was considering it, Emerald could see it in his eyes. She knew what it looked like when a mark was starting to soften. She lunged greedily for that tiny spark of hope.

“But wouldn’t you risk anything?” she said. “That monster took your best friend _away_ from you. He should die for that. You should be fighting, right now, as hard as you can to make him _pay_ for what he took from you.” She was breathing too hard now, and the words wouldn’t stop. “How the hell are you going to look yourself in the mirror every day if you don’t, huh? How are you going to live knowing you let someone you loved down like that?”

She went for it, forced her eyes to narrow, her jaw to stay set.

“Give me the Key.”

Miller’s eyes were wide. He glanced at Clark.

“A convincing performance, miss,” said Clark. “But I’m afraid we can’t agree.”

Emerald’s heart plummeted.

Sonny piped up. “But she’s so—”

“She’s clearly practiced,” Clark said. “And she’s clearly quite used to getting her way. As if we would give her the only power we have left on the off chance that _she—”_ he shook Emerald, for emphasis, she guessed—“can kill _Marcus Black._ ”

And Mrs. Copperfield had called Emerald a liar enough for her whole lifetime, and any calm she had had boiled over.

“I was telling the truth, you lying fuck!” she burst out.

“Foul-mouthed, duplicitous, _and_ entitled,” Clark sneered. “What a winning combination. Miller, get on with it would you?”

Miller sighed. “All right. Sonny, you don’t have to watch if you don’t want.”  
  
Emerald watched the other girl turn her eyes away. Despair sank its claws back into her.

“If you come back—” and that note of fatherly entreaty vanished from Miller’s voice as he rounded on Emerald—“we will do much worse. We’re family, and I am sick to death of people fucking with that.”

Thinking of Daily’s bloodied ear as he lay in Lavender’s arms, Emerald nodded. That was something she could understand.

And then the club came down on her left knee, and every rational thought in her head died screaming. When it came down on the right, it was worse, and the _sound_ it made, she didn’t want to know that her body could make a sound like that. She tried to scream, but all she could get out around the knot in her throat was a pathetic whistling sound.

The scream came when Clark let go of her arms, and her weight fell onto her legs and lit them up with volcanic pain. She pitched to her hands in the dirt, falling onto her side to keep the pressure from her shattered kneecaps, her whole body shuddering.

Heavy, tree-trunk arms slid under Emerald’s shoulders and knees, lifting her up.

“Sorry Greenie,” Miller said, starting to carry her toward one of the tunnels in the wall. “Just business.”

The nickname hit Emerald in the chest like a third strike of the club, because that was Mercury’s first name for her, the way he’d thought of her before she’d given him her real one. The sob that came out of her then made her chest shudder and her stomach clench.

The voices passing over her head didn’t mean anything anymore.

“Can’t have her tracing it back.”

“We’ll have to blow it the old-fashioned way, then.”

“Now that Hildy’s gone.”

She was just aware of her body jolting slowly upward through the darkness, of a strange buzzing sensation against her hip.

With the grating of a stone trapdoor, the total darkness gave way, suddenly, to moonlight. With surprising gentleness, the arms under Emerald lowered her to the ground. Through the tears in her eyes, the Tabards were nothing more than three shadowy ghosts blotting out the stars. Then, in another grating of stone on stone, they were gone. A distant _boom_ sounded from beneath her, then silence.

The buzzing at Emerald’s hip was still there. She reached down with shaking fingers to find the slim rectangle of her scroll, alight with blue. Blinking back the tears, she just managed to make out Lavender’s name. Any pride she’d had was gone. She didn’t deserve Lavender, didn’t deserve to have somebody come and rescue her _(no one had rescued Mercury)_ from the pain…

Gods, the pain.

Her thumb hit the “Answer” button before her mind could stop it.

“Green?” Lavender’s voice was hoarse with worry. “Green, we saw your aura tank, where are you?”

Emerald swallowed. She wasn’t sure, and her voice, would it even work?

“Green, please!” The raw fear in Lavender’s voice cut through the fog in Emerald’s mind. She scanned the buildings around her and found that she knew them.

“One-hundred-and-ninth and eighth,” Emerald rasped into the scroll, hating how the tears gummed up her voice. “By the soda shop.” Against her will, she whimpered. “Hurry. Please hurry.”

“Already on the way, Green. Day, grab your medkit, she sounds—!” The call cut off, and Emerald’s mind cut off with it.

She drifted, the pain making her float away from her body, not sure if the clouds drifting over her vision were in the sky or her mind. How long she lingered like that, she wasn’t sure, and then—

“Oh, _fuck.”_ Lavender’s boots skidded to a halt beside Emerald’s face, like her Semblance had just switched off.

The earth let go of Emerald, and she jolted up off of the ground until gravity came back and dropped her into Lavender’s arms. When her knees folded, she swallowed a scream and tasted bile.

“Emerald…” Daily’s eyes were red like he’d been crying. He looked at Lavender. “Why would she…?”

“We can find out later,” said Lavender stoutly, but Emerald could feel her arms shaking. “Right now—right now we need to get help.” She paused. Her eyes closed. “Day, call Tukson.”

“Yes,” said Daily, his voice froggy. “That’s a good idea. We… we need a grown-up.”

Emerald was drifting again, Lavender’s hair blurring into the light of the streetlamps.

Lavender jostled her, and she let out a whine.

“Stay with me, Green,” Lavender was saying, her eyes staring straight into Emerald’s. “We’ve just gotta get you to…”

Emerald didn’t hear the rest. She’d failed. She’d lost Mercury. What happened now didn’t matter. She didn’t want to stay.

So she didn’t.

With a sigh of something that wasn’t quite relief, she let the crawling blackness at the edges of her vision take over, until there was no more sky.

* * *

Mercury leaned against the wall just inside the mouth of the cave, letting the shadows hide him from the searching moonlight. The sound of the engine dying down had come from the north, about a quarter of a mile away, he guessed. Marcus would be piling off now, searching for Mercury on foot.

In the thousands on thousands of square miles between Vale and the northern coast, how the fuck had the bastard found him?

Had his bosses and their creepy-ass Grimm used some kind of… of magic to seek him out? Or had he stuck a tracker in Mercury’s arm in his sleep?

Or had Marcus just constructed Mercury so completely that his every move was predictable?

Marcus would be headed this way. He would be making a beeline for the cliff face, searching for caves, because Mercury’s training told him to take cover there.

He couldn’t be here when Marcus got here. He couldn’t obey that training if he wanted to escape, even if the cave dark offered him a moment of the element of surprise.

But once he was out of the cave, where could he run? Wherever he went, Marcus wouldn’t be far behind. If Mercury could just find a way to move fast enough to—

The bullhead.

Marcus would have to leave it to track down Mercury, and Mercury was willing to bet money that whatever chump he left in the pilot’s seat wouldn’t be a match for his skills.

Ari Dunai could speak to that.

Before he could think better of it, Mercury sprinted out into the night, keeping to the shadows of the trees, trying to make his footfalls silent. After all these years with Marcus, he was good at keeping quiet, and his feet hadn’t forgotten how to stalk noiselessly over a forest floor, so the deer and the rabbits wouldn’t hear him until it was too late.

The problem, he knew, was that Marcus could move just as silently, so he took a roundabout path toward the bullhead, hoping to dodge the straight path that Marcus would follow to the cave. He froze at every rustle of the wind through the trees, at every gap in the constant buzzing of the cicadas. But he kept moving, step by step, through the darkness, until, a few hundred yards to his left, he made out the telltale glint of metal.

Mercury broke into a sprint. Marcus would probably have reached the cliffs by now. Speed mattered more now than stealth did.

He could do this.

He’d never actually piloted a bullhead before, but years of staring, bored and despondent, at the pilots as they worked had left him with a decent enough understanding of the controls that he figured he could at least get it off the ground and then point it towards—

Towards where?

Getting across to Solitas would tax the hell out of his fuel reserves. But it might actually put him out of Marcus’s reach, at least for a while. But if he flew north—he’d never get back home. To Emerald. The ache in his chest would stay and stay and stay, and nobody would be there to hold him when it did, or read him a book or tell him a joke so he didn’t think so much of the pain.

Fuck it.

He’d point the damn thing due south.

Mercury broke from the cover of the trees and pelted up the lowered ramp of the bullhead, spinning quickly to pull the lever that sealed the doors. Then he dropped his knife into a reverse grip and whirled toward the pilot’s seat, ready to clock them unconscious and dump them out onto the forest floor.

But the pilot’s seat was empty.

From the gloom at the back of the bullhead came an uncanny bubbling of laughter.

With a coldness crawling up his spine, Mercury turned to see a pair of glowing yellow eyes open in the dark.

His stomach dropped.

_Callows._

“Well,” that breathy, threatening voice gloated. “I had my objections when your father diverted us from our queen’s mission, but I must say—” Callows broke off into a giggle—“this is positively delicious.”

Mercury gritted his teeth and tightened his hold on the knife. “Stay back, freak.”

He didn’t know a thing about Tyrian except that Marcus, even when he wasn’t drinking, complained about how sack-of-hammers crazy he was, and that that godsdamned giggle trailed after him everywhere he went.

But that was enough for Mercury to know that Callows was someone you didn’t want to be locked in a bullhead with.

Again, that fucking laugh echoed tinnily against the metal walls that sealed them in.

“But it’s such a tragedy. The little bird thinks a pair of new wings will let him fly his cage, but then—” another peal of laughter as Callows spread his hands wide—“the bars go on and on forever, oh, it’s simply too good.”

Mercury’s mind raced. All he knew about Callows’s fighting style was that he was good enough that Marcus had never even tried to discreetly axe him while they were on a job together, and that did _not_ bode well.

“Now, just stay right there,” said Callows, “and be a good boy while I call your father. Dear Marcus has been so _excited_ to see you again.”

Mercury’s eyes fixed on the blue light of the scroll rising toward Callows’s ear, and rage curled his lip. He wasn’t going back to Marcus, he _wasn’t_ , and if Callows made this a two-on-one fight, any chances of victory Mercury had were dead.

With a flick of his wrist, he sent the knife flying, clipping the scroll out of Tyrian’s hand and making it drop to the floor. Mercury followed the knife, springing forward and spinning down into a crouch, throwing a kick at the freak’s leg.

Tyrian leapt nimbly into the air, his foot slamming back down on Mercury’s ankle, trying to pin it. Mercury cursed and flung all his weight into a barrel roll, narrowly freeing his ankle and, with the other leg, sending Tyrian stumbling back half a step with a kick to the shin.

Swiveling his legs, Mercury rolled back up to his feet, breathing hard. The bastard was fast, even faster than Marcus. And he was still fucking laughing. If Mercury was going to have any shot at winning this, he’d need room to maneuver, to wear Callows down until he got sloppy.

But there was no room to maneuver, and Mercury narrowly ducked the bladed gauntlet that went slicing over his head. He slammed a jab up toward Callows’s gut, but the freak’s other hand closed around his wrist and wrenched him off balance. Mercury knew better than to fight the motion, even as a gauntlet sliced over his aura. He spun with it instead, driving a knee into Tyrian’s side, but as he did he realized that something was wrong. Where Tyrian’s hand had gripped it, the aura on Mercury’s wrist was flaking away into nothing as a sickly purple glow lit up the freak’s fingers. On his chest, too, where Callows’s blade had crossed it, his aura was shivering off like sawdust.

_What the fuck?_

Callows giggled again, his grip on Mercury’s wrist—the same one Marcus had broken when he was twelve—going vice-like, grinding the bones together.

Mercury bit back a cry of pain and lashed his foot up into Tyrian’s wrist, narrowly breaking the hold.

He needed to run.

He spun around as quickly as he could and reached for the lever that would open the door, that might give him a chance at escape.

The second his fingers closed around the lever and pulled, though, a rustling, clicking sound caught up with him, and he whirled to see what it was just in time for Something to pierce the front of his left shoulder.

And then he was hitting the floor in the open doorway of the bullhead, feeling like he had been struck by lightning, like Marcus had run garotte wire through his shoulder and lit it up with electricity Dust while it was stabbing through the muscle.

Tyrian’s laugh grew and grew.

“What—what did you do?” Mercury barely managed to grit out the words through the pain.

“Why, dear boy,” said Tyrian, and the dark, clicking _thing_ that had run into Mercury’s shoulder slipped through the air, resting its point just under Mercury’s chin, forcing him to go rigid and motionless even as the jagged, electric pain made him want to thrash and scream. A tail. A scorpion’s tail. The venom must be running through Mercury’s veins now, lighting up his nerves, oh gods. Fuck. “I only followed my nature. And now you”—another fucking giggle—"must follow yours. You have the privilege, no, the _honor,_ of being raised to the service of our goddess.”

 _Goddess?_ Marcus had made vague comments about “that pasty witch” in a tone of fear and… maybe reverence…? that Mercury never heard him use for anyone else. Tyrian was gazing into the middle distance as he spoke, a dreamy, horrible smile overtaking his face.

Tyrian’s hands flared like smoke, and then that creepy, euphoric gaze turned sharply down at Mercury. “You don’t have the choice of turning from it.”

The ceiling of the bullhead seemed to be melting before Mercury’s eyes, revealing fireworks that shone in the night only for the sparks to hit his face and stick and stain like blood.

Whatever Callows had hit him with, Mercury realized, it was fucking with his mind. He pressed his eyes shut, but the feeling of blood pelting hot and thick against his face didn’t fade as his body convulsed frantically.

When he opened his eyes, the moonlight was gone, and in its place, Marcus was sneering down at him.

“I guess your pasty queen’s blood magic wasn’t a waste of time after all,” he was saying, talking to Callows, but his eyes didn’t leave Mercury’s face.

Every muscle in Mercury’s body seized with pain, and he knew he was screwed, more than he’d ever been in his life. He had no weapons, no Semblance, not even the power to stand.

But he could still talk. Even though it would only make things worse, it was the only power he had left, and damned if he wasn’t going to use it.

“So,” he said, his jaw trembling as the venom worked its way up into his throat, “what’ll it be this time?” He went silent for a second as a tremor of pain forced him to clench his teeth. “I’m grounded? Oh wait, you’ve done that. So you’ll beat me up then? Oops, done that, too. Ooh! I know! You could rip out a piece of my soul, you fuck. But wait…”

Mercury trailed off as another spasm took him. The stony, resolved look on Marcus’s face didn’t waver. “I take away your crutch, boy. I take your weaseling little Semblance, and _still,_ you’re weak.”

His spit hit Mercury’s face just like the drops of blood that were starting to feel more real by the second.

“I give you the chance to _fight—”_ The calm was cracking now, and Mercury cringed as Marcus’s voice went harsh—“and you _run._ Just like her.” Fury had contorted Marcus’s face into something horrible, and Mercury’s first thought was of Emerald.

He didn’t know of any other _her_ that Marcus could be talking about.

Had Marcus found her, somehow? Had she tried to run? Had she gotten away? The venom had shorted out all the usual checks his brain set on trains of thought to keep them from running away, and panic gripped him.

If Marcus was looking for Emerald, Mercury sure as fuck wasn’t going to do anything to help him find her. But with the way the venom was eating up his sense of what was real, he didn’t trust himself to keep quiet, to keep from screaming her name like he had when he was twelve.

While Marcus foraged around in the back of the bullhead, searching for something, Mercury bit his tongue bloody so it wouldn’t betray her.

Next to the pain of the venom, it was nothing.

And then Marcus was standing over him again, the moonlight catching on the steak knife Mercury had stolen.

Marcus was staring at the knife, the light in his eyes somehow just the same as the sparks of silver that shone along the blade. _“Exactly_ like her,” he said, and then his eyes and the knife both turned toward Mercury.

Over the taste of blood in his mouth and the warmth of it on his face, he understood that Marcus wasn’t talking about Emerald. He was talking about…

_Mom?_

“Callows, prep the medbay.”

Marcus’s hand locked around Mercury’s throat and dragged him down the ramp and into the grass. Every star was the point of a knife. Their gleaming tips were the only things he could still see through the haze of venom.

When one of the stars fell and plunged into the muscle above his knee, it didn’t come as a surprise.

* * *

“They chopped her tail, Frisby, she’s one of us, I swear on my claws.”

“And yet her spine seems to end at her coccyx, Tukson.”

As a hand moved from under her back, Emerald’s eyes flickered open just enough for her to make out the gleam of a gold locket that hung around the neck of a small, trim woman with white hair and mouse ears of the same color. Cold. The metal against her back was cold. The pain in her knees was still there, but something was shoving it away from her brain. The cold took up the front of her mind. It was too much like the shivering damp that had come after Mel’s bullet had lodged in her guts.

A sigh. “Please, off the books, she’s a good kid. No one else in the Fang needs to know.”

“If the new lieutenant gets word that I’ve offered my services to a human…”  
  
“Gods’ sakes, Frisby, I don’t want to lock horns with Taurus either, but you and I both have been paying our dues since before he was born, and I don’t think we have any obligation to let some teenager tell us what is and isn’t race treason, no matter how high Khan decides to promote him. You’re a doctor. This girl’s wounded. It doesn’t seem that complicated to me.”

“That might have held under Belladonna, but—”

“But you’re too much of a coward to do your fucking job?” The harsh tone of Lavender’s voice called Emerald closer to the surface of consciousness. A flash of silver passed before her eyes as one of Lavender’s knives stretched out toward the doctor, who stumbled back a step in alarm.

“Lavender.” Tukson’s voice was tense but level. “That is not a productive approach to this situation.”

Emerald shivered, feeling like she was looking up at them from somewhere dark and far away, like she wouldn’t be there when they looked down again. One of Daily’s hands curled around Lavender’s wrist, tugged it away, and that silver flash vanished from the world that stretched out above Emerald.

“Twenty years, Alba, and I’ve never asked a favor. Please. Believe me when I say that this is important to me.”

“Tukson, I’m not sure…”

Daily’s voice piped up. “She beat up the boy who took my ear. She got him arrested by the SDC and jailed for murdering a Faunus girl. And. And she’s very good at Vacuan Rat Slap. Even when she doesn’t cheat.”

A silence.

“Well. I suppose since I’m trapped between two stubborn children with horns anyway…”

“Thank you, Frisby.”

“Don’t. This never happened.” A sigh. “This isn’t going to be pretty. I suggest you wait outside.”

There was a sharp pain in Emerald’s wrist, then nothing.

When her eyes opened again, the world was soft and dim, and her body felt stiff and dull with pain. What little light there was seemed to scratch her eyes, making the aching feeling of hollowness in her skull worse.

Gods, what had happened to make her head hurt like this?

For a merciful moment, she couldn’t remember. She was alone with the drowsiness and the blanket flung over her chest and the spackled white ceiling.

And then the memory of green light and crunching bone broke on her like a tidal wave.

_Mercury!_

She sat up on her hands as quickly as she could, blinking through the wave of nausea and the weird twinges in her legs. She’d failed. She needed to get back to Torchwick, find another plan to get to Mercury, she couldn’t leave him there just because she was a useless idiot who’d screwed up a heist that should have been child’s play. She fumbled, reaching for her scroll—it wasn’t in her pocket.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw that it was resting, instead, in Lavender’s hands, its blue light casting a glow on her face as Daily perched on the dresser behind her, peering over her shoulder to read along. Both of their eyes flicked up from the screen to fix on her, and she felt suddenly caught.

Emerald squirmed, hating whatever this thick, heavy material that was holding her legs locked out straight was. She balled her hands into fists, wanting to claw and spit and fight back against the looks of hurt and pity that they had turned on her.

“Give me the scroll,” she said, trying to summon the voice she used when she was putting a plan into motion and needed every word to land.

Lavender set her jaw. “Why? So that you can set up another meeting with your best pal Roman Torchwick?”

Daily said nothing, his eyes wide, his ear turned back, like he was still afraid of her. His eyes were damp.

Emerald snarled. “Give me the fucking scroll.”

“It wouldn’t help you even if I did.” Lavender shrugged. “Since you’ve been out, about fifty billion messages have come in from good old Guyliner calling you a ‘naïve idiot’ and a ‘lost cause’ and a ‘liability’ who’s ‘charged straight over the line between Just Crazy Enough to Work and Fucking Certifiable.’”

Emerald gritted her teeth. “That’s just him bitching and trying to drive the price down for when he re-hires me, it’s what he does.”

“He says,” Lavender went on, “that you’ve done something too fucking stupid to come back from.” She set down the scroll, her eyes going hard. “And I’m having trouble finding any reason why I shouldn’t agree with him.” Daily looked away, chewing on his fingernails.

Emerald glared right back at Lavender, trying to make herself as hard and unwavering as that light violet stare. She couldn’t back down now. She had to get back on her feet and find another way to get to Mercury, and she couldn’t afford to slow down. It couldn’t take her aura that long to get her knees patched up, could it?  
  
“I’m doing what I have to do,” Emerald said. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Yeah, well I don’t.” Lavender stood up, her shoulders tight around her ears. “I don’t fucking understand. I don’t understand why Wolfboy wouldn’t tell us about _this.”_ Lavender swept the scroll through the air, and Emerald understood, suddenly, that she’d read the entire thing, that she and Daily knew the truth about Mercury.

That she’d failed to keep them out of this shit.

Lavender took a step forward. “I don’t understand why he would keep this from us when we could’ve _helped him_ —” and the anger in Lavender’s voice matched the one that had been boiling under Emerald’s ribs for weeks now—“I don’t understand why _you_ would keep this from us.”

She took another step, and Emerald shrank back, clutching the blankets to her chest and hating how small the gesture made her feel.

“I don’t understand why you cut the people who love you out of your life, and I sure as _fuck_ do not understand why you would _threaten Day_ and then go out and get yourself _fucking kneecapped!”_ Lavender was shouting now, pointing out at the door of her and Daily’s little two-room apartment, her shoulders heaving.

Emerald didn’t mean to flinch, but she did, her knees smarting even under the mountain of painkillers that were probably the only things from keeping her from shattering into sobs.

Daily stepped toward them both, hands outstretched.

“Lav,” he said quietly, “maybe you should give her some air?”

“She’d better use that air to apologize to you,” Lavender said stonily. But she handed the scroll to Daily, and she backed away from Emerald, leaning against the bedroom door with her arms crossed in a way that she _definitely hadn’t_ picked up from Mercury. In a way that definitely didn’t make Emerald’s eyes sting.

Emerald couldn’t take another second of this, of feeling weak and judged and like a failure. She stretched out her hand to Daily, expecting him to set the scroll in it, expecting him to let her get back to work, to escape back into that never-ending blue plain of possibility and desperation.

“Thank you,” she said as his hand moved forward.

Daily froze, his fingers tightening around the scroll, his eyebrows shooting up and his jaw going tight in a way that Emerald had never seen before. He looked… disgusted.

“You… you really think that I would just hand this to you. After you’ve used it to hurt all of us.” The tears in his eyes grew brighter. “You know what? I don’t understand either.”

He pressed his eyes shut, gritting his teeth together, and Emerald was sure now that he was going to yell at her too, the way Lavender had. The way she deserved to be yelled at.

But when he opened his eyes, they were calmer, despite the tear running down his cheek. “But I _want_ to understand. Emerald, could you please help me understand? You’re my friend, and I—I don’t want to be this angry with you.”

“But you _should_ be angry,” Emerald said, struggling to push back against the feeling that she was crumbling. She didn’t deserve to be laid up safe in Daily’s bed, eating his and Lavender’s food. She deserved to lie on the sidewalk where the Tabards had left her until she was dead.

Why couldn’t he see that?

“Oh, we know,” Lavender snapped. “But it’s going to be a lot less awkward for us to get you healed up and then go save Wolfboy if we don’t hate you the entire time.”

Emerald dropped the blankets. “What?” Lavender couldn’t mean that—she couldn’t want to help, not after everything.

“Mercury’s our friend, too, Emerald,” Daily said softly.

“Damn straight he is,” Lavender added. “And if you think we’re just going to leave him with that unhinged fucking drunk, you must have a lot of screws loose. So again—why the fuck wouldn’t you tell us when you knew we could help? For someone who loves that idiot so much, you sure as hell made getting him back a lot harder on yourself.”

 _Because I didn’t deserve for it to be easy!_ The pressure behind Emerald’s eyes was growing, her breath getting short, she needed to run, but her stupid legs were shattered and locked in place by casts and she couldn’t do this, she couldn’t.

“Emerald, please,” Daily said again. “Just help us understand. Why would—why would you scare me that way? Why would you do so many things that just made this worse?”

And gods. With their help, she could have the Key by now. She could have Mercury back. She could have saved him. But she’d fucked it up. She’d fucked everything up, and she deserved Lav and Daily less than ever but Merc needed them but she didn’t deserve them but Merc needed them but—

And before she could stop herself, she cried out, “Because I _left_ him!”

And then she was sobbing. But now that she’d started explaining, she couldn’t stop, even though her voice was a teary, wobbling wreck.

Because she did want them to understand.

“He was the first person who ever stayed.” Tears constricted her throat and forced her to pause, to gasp for breath. “And I _left_ him.” She buried her face in her hands as the sobs won out over her voice.

It came out quieter, rasping, when she managed to speak again. “Of course I want you to hate me for that.” A weird, hiccupping sound came out of her chest. “I do.”

A hand settled on her shoulder, and she looked up from her smeared, shaking hands to see Daily, his mouth half-open in horror.

“He was hurt,” Emerald choked out, “and he was _scared._ And I couldn’t get him out. I just—I found him lying there. Bleeding. With his Semblance torn out. And all I did was patch him up a little, so that he could get broken again. And I _ran._ ”

Something shifted at the foot of the bed, and Emerald looked down to see Lavender sitting there, resting a hand on her ankle, her brow furrowed with worry, and again she had to stop and let the tears take over.

“And I was so angry I thought I was going to burn up, but—but I couldn’t be mad at Merc for hiding it, not after—I just can’t. And I can’t—” her voice broke again—“I can’t kill Marcus. I’m not strong enough. And so I just kept it all for myself, and I—Day, I’m so sorry I let it hurt you.” She drew in a shaky breath, tried to pull herself together a little. Daily should get a good apology. “I—I was so hung up on what a piece of shit I was and how much I deserved to be alone that—that I let myself forget what _you_ deserve. And you deserve friends who are nice to you and both your ears and every nice illustrated pack of cards from here to Vacuo, and I’m so, _so_ sorry that I treated you the way I did. I—I wanted to hurt myself, and I—I should have understood that that didn’t make it okay to hurt you. It’s never okay.”

“Emerald.” Daily’s eyes were wide. “You don’t really think you deserve… all this, do you?”

And that hard-won composure died, and Emerald curled in on herself. Her voice came out strained and tiny. “Yeah. I kinda do.”

As another gale of weeping swept through her, slim arms circled around Emerald’s shoulders, holding her close against the familiar orange fabric of Mercury’s old jacket, but lightly, like Daily was scared he would break her.

Gods, she probably did look fragile right now. She wasn’t strong enough, anymore, to shove her friends away, to stop them from taking care of her. She sank back into Daily’s hug, and she cried until she couldn’t anymore.

Lavender stood. “So,” she said, “what I’m taking from this, Green, is that you’re an idiot.” There was no anger in her words, and when Emerald looked up to see Lavender standing over her and Daily, there was a determined light in her eyes.

“There’s only one person to blame for this shitstorm, and it sure as fuck isn’t you.” She picked up the scroll again, stared at it. “All these years…” she shook her head and held up the scroll like it was a piece of evidence in a courtroom. “You know what I learned from this?”

“That Mercury’s family is patently undeserving of him?” Daily prompted.

Lavender shook her head. “Anyone who does that to a kid doesn’t get to be fucking family. No. Wolfboy’s family is right here in this room. That’s what I learned. And I for one am taking my knives and filing for custody. I’m getting my goddamn comic buddy back.”

“You can’t do it alone,” Emerald whispered, even though the sharp set of Lavender’s jaw and the way her fists curled made her look like a force to be reckoned with.

“Of course I can’t,” Lavender said. “And neither could you.” Her head hung low for a moment. “And neither could Mercury.” She looked back up. “We took down the Golds as a team. As a family. And that’s how we’re going to take down Marcus fucking Black.”

“Sounds great, Dad,” said Daily earnestly.

“You know it, sport,” Lavender shot back. Her gaze fell on Emerald. “What do you say, Green?”

Emerald looked down at the lumps of her legs under the covers, then at Daily’s hopeful face, then at Lavender’s. “I don’t think I have much choice.”  
  
She didn’t believe in herself anymore—in the myth of the girl who'd called out "Is this your leader?" to the rooftops. But she could believe in her friends.

Lavender nodded. “It’s settled then.” She huffed out a laugh. “And all it took was you breaking both legs and getting stuck in casts for a month.”

_Annnnd there goes my calm._

“A month?!”

Daily rubbed her back. “Frisby said it’ll probably be almost three before you’re able to make it through a real fight again.”

“But Mercury—”

“Wouldn’t want you to get yourself killed,” said Lavender. “We have one shot at getting this right, yeah? If we waste it, we’re all fucked, him included. We’re gonna have to take the time for you to heal.” She looked at the floor. “Wolfboy’s tough. He—he can make it that long.”

But she sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

* * *

The sea was the color of Ari Dunai’s aura. Of his cloak.

Mercury was far enough down that the sun was a weak searchlight filtering through the waves to land on his face.

In the deeps beneath him, something was stirring, and he didn’t want to find out what it was. His lungs were already tight, and he pulled at the water with his hands and kicked with his legs, trying to drag himself upward.

His arms pressed through the water like they were supposed to, but his legs did nothing. They slid straight through the currents like he’d phased them through, leaving him clawing toward the light with his hands alone, kicking and kicking and never rising closer to the surface. He must be doing something right, because the sun was getting nearer, bolder, and thank gods, because his lungs were about to burst and the salt of the water tasted too much like blood in his mouth, and—

Something unseen reached out of the inky blackness beneath him and sank talons into the nothing of his legs.

It dragged him down until the sun was gone and the only sensation left was the flavor of iron.

It had been a long time since Mercury had hit a level of physical pain that felt _new._ Over the years, all the usual scrapes and bruises and fractures had become just that—usual. They hurt, sure, but he’d taught himself to work with them, because if he didn’t, he’d never do anything but lie in a lump on his mattress.

Whatever the fuck he was feeling right now wasn’t usual.

And the air smelled like metal. Like blood.

He guessed that meant that he was awake. That the ocean had been a dream.

_I’ve never been to the beach._

Some of the usual kinds of pain were still there. His tongue was swollen, and his mouth tasted like rust. There was a throbbing feeling pulsing through his left shoulder, and his head pounded and spun.

But all those signals were buried under the torrent of static and hellfire shooting up his nerves from his legs.

He hadn’t had a chance to open his eyes yet, but he knew it was _bad._ It was the kind of pain that gripped like a claw, that told him not to move or he would fuck himself up worse.

But he needed to know what was making that pain. He forced his eyes open to see the horrible, familiar ceiling of his bedroom, to feel the worn-out springs of his shitty fucking mattress digging into his shoulders and his back and the backs of his—

_Oh gods._

With an effort that made his jaw lock up and the _stay-still-stay-still_ pain grip him even tighter, he lifted his head enough to look down at himself.

And okay, he was kind of expecting it. The last thing he remembered was Marcus taking a steak knife to him.

But that didn’t stop the vertigo that seized him when he saw his legs end in bandages above the knee. It didn’t stop his mind from turning itself inside out trying to reject what it was seeing.

His oldest weapons, the ones he’d used to scrape Marcus’s shins even once he’d been caught by the wrists. The things that had carried him away from the cabin after Fenri, away from the suburbs after Emerald. His kicks, his blocks, his whirls through the air.

Gone.

His head fell back, and he blinked hard, bit down on his lip. He wasn’t going to give Marcus the satisfaction of seeing him cry. He wasn’t going to be that weak.

Gods, it was so fucking stupid that that had to be his first priority.

Almost as stupid as Marcus deciding, “You know what? I’ve ripped my kid’s soul in half and he still didn’t turn out right, so I’ll just take his fucking legs and see if that does the trick.”

It was so stupid and cruel and fucking _Marcus_ that a strangled laugh came out of Mercury’s throat, because of course. Of course. Of course when Marcus’s Semblance had failed him, he’d just picked up a knife and started cutting.

Footsteps.

Mercury’s hands balled into fists.

_Great, what am I gonna do, punch him in the knees?_

A shadow passed along Mercury’s side, and then Marcus was standing over him, his arms crossed and his eyes icy in spite of the smirk that Mercury wanted to claw off of his face.

“I thought that venom would never wear off,” he said, almost casually, nudging Mercury with his toe and making Mercury want to spit flames.

“I’m disappointed,” he went on. “My _son,_ such a coward that he can even make his own legs into a crutch.”

Mercury stared hard at him, his hands still clenched. Talking was too much of a struggle against the pain that was clamping his jaw shut.

_Would it kill you to just be honest you fucking asshole? Would it kill you to throw out all this survival of the strong bullshit and just admit that you’re a sick son of a bitch who can’t bear the thought of not having someone around to torture?_

The tears were pricking at the corners of Mercury’s eyes, and Mercury held on tight to the hatred running through him, because that was the only feeling inside of him strong enough to drown out the pain and keep the tears from rolling down his face.

He put all the strength he had left into a promise.

“I’m going to kill you,” he snarled.

Marcus glanced down at his bandaged legs and let out a short, dry laugh.

“Best of luck, boy.”

And then he was gone.

And he took the hate that Mercury needed to stay afloat with him, leaving him trapped with fear and pain and no fucking legs. He bit down harder on his lip, hating the rising feeling of helplessness that was scratching at the inside of his chest.

He had to stay strong, he had to fight, to keep Marcus from breaking him.

 _But he did break me. Inside and out._

Gods, he just needed to think. His right hand uncurled and reached down for the stone wolf in the cuff of his—

Shit.

Now he was crying.

Over some dumb knick-knack that had probably cost half a lien at the mall. Because he’d felt so clever about hiding it from Marcus. Because he’d made the assumption—the stupid, _naïve_ assumption—that it would be safe if he kept it on his person. That Marcus wouldn’t take his body to pieces.

But of course he would. Always, always, of course.

Another shadow passed beside him now, and Mercury shuddered, even over the fevered shivering brought on by the pain in his legs.

On the plus side, the voice that came out of the Seer Grimm brought that powerful, comfortable hate right back.

“Oh my gods,” Hazel’s deep voice was rough with shock. “I am so sorry.”

The hate overtook the pain by a mile.

“Thanks,” Mercury drawled. “That makes me feel so much better.”

“Truly, Mercury. This… this is unforgivable, and—”

 _“And you let it fucking happen!”_ Mercury’s chest burned and his world went red. “You _let_ it!”

“I understand that I haven’t been—”

“No, _fuck you.”_ Hazel’s pitying tone made Mercury want to burn him to death. “You haven’t done jack shit for me, so you can stop pretending to care now, because it just moves you higher up the kill list.”

All these years Hazel could have given him a way out, all these _fucking years,_ and the only person who’d offered him an escape was—

“Mercury, I—”  
  
“Watts,” Mercury growled, trying to make it sound like an order, like he had something, anything left that could possibly count as power. “I don’t want your pity. _Get. Me. Watts.”_

The big guy stopped talking after that. His footsteps faded.

Mercury waited, grinding his teeth together against that immobilizing tide of pain, and something inside of him snarled, like a creature at bay, lashing out with claws and fangs because it had nowhere left to run.

_I get it, gods. I fucking get it. I try to stand up to him and he takes my Semblance. I try to run from him and he takes my legs._

_I get that I don’t get to be happy. I get that my life is his._

_But you have to get that I’m going to kill him._

_I don’t care how much it hurts. I don’t care how hard I have to get._

_The last thing that fucker is ever going to know is that I’m not weak._

“I understand you wanted to speak with me, Mr. Black?” Watts’s voice was as smug and slimy as ever.

Mercury cut to the chase, kept his voice level. Not weak. Not fucking weak. “The offer you made me. ‘S it still good?”  
  
“It is, young man.” Mercury could hear Watts’s smile even if he couldn’t see it. “It is indeed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recap: Emerald went to get the Skeleton Key from the Tabards, but her Semblance-based plan of attack led to her aura breaking from overexertion in their vast maze of tunnels beneath the city. When the Tabards caught her, they broke both her kneecaps and left her on a street corner, where Lav and Daily found her. With Tukson's help, they got her to a medic and back to their apartment, where they took her scroll and learned the truth about Mercury. Now, Team E_LD are somewhat reconciled and ready to start planning to save him.
> 
> Mercury made it in the wilderness a week before Marcus tracked him down with help from Tyrian Callows. Mercury nearly escaped with their bullhead, only for Tyrian to sting him and Marcus to cut off his legs. On waking up back at the house, Mercury took the only escape route left to him and agreed to Watts's offer to train to take Marcus's place in the cabal.
> 
> God. That sure was a lot. Pretty much all of the expansions I made to this arc during the hiatus came about after I drafted this chapter. Much as I want to hurry along to better times, I felt it was important to take the time to let the events of this chapter carry the weight that they should and have repercussions that matter, so the next couple chapters will be a lot slower and quieter, in an effort to give Em and Merc some narrative space to recuperate and to process what's happened to them here. Whether or not they process it well (or are even in situations where "processing it well" is possible) is another story, but that space felt necessary, and I hope I'll be able to do them justice in these traumatic and complicated circumstances. As always, thank you so much for reading <3
> 
> So. I think this calls for a chapter of Prank Regents, don't you?


	25. So I Got Strong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emerald and Mercury struggle with their losses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: panic attacks, flashbacks to the events of last chapter

Mercury woke up with a gasp tearing its way out of his throat and the stumps of his legs searing like Marcus’s knives were still laying into them.

He couldn’t actually remember, in the delirium of the venom, the feeling of the blades carving him into pieces, but his body remembered. And now it wouldn’t let him forget.

This—the cold sweat and the shaking and the searing memory of the pain—had happened for the past three nights, and he was sure it would happen again. His legs weren’t going to forgive him for letting them get sawed in half any time soon.

Why should they?  
  
He struggled up onto his side, pressing his back to the wall, and it wasn’t enough, apparently, for his legs to be on fire, because the emptiness in his chest was gnawing at him with ugly, blunt teeth. Normally, when he had a nightmare when he was little, or a dream that opened a pit in his chest that didn’t feel too different to the one plaguing him now, he curled up small on his side and tucked a knee against his chest, and the pressure crushed that empty feeling into a shape that was easier to handle.

But Mercury didn’t have fucking knees anymore, so he was out of luck.

He braced his forearm against his chest and pressed down as hard as he could and tried and tried and failed to keep his breathing from going wild and shallow, to keep a knot from forming in his throat.

It was so fucking stupid. He didn’t—he didn’t need to feel like this. He was safe for now, and Watts would come install his new legs tomorrow, and he’d be able to fight just as well as ever before long.

There was no reason to be weak about this. For fuck’s sake, Marcus wasn’t even in the house.

After his prosthetics, that was the first term Mercury had set with Watts—getting the bastard far, far away until Mercury had gotten strong enough to fight him off. Within an hour, Marcus had set out for a mission in Vacuo that would keep him away for over a month. Just like magic. And like magic, a bunch of masked goons had been buzzed into the house the next day, to drop him off a wheelchair and a bunch of frozen dinners and to shove the microwave close enough to the edge of the counter that he could actually fucking reach it. To set up parallel bars in the living room while Watts fussed at them through the Seer Grimm and to measure Mercury’s armspan and do scans of what remained of his legs while Mercury pretended that the contact and the being looked at didn’t make him want to crawl out of his own skin.

Still, Watts had summoned all the kit and caboodle that apparently came with getting your legs chopped off, and Mercury could use it to get strong again.

Like in Emerald’s fairy tales, though, he knew that it would have a price.

He wasn’t scared to pay it. Everything he could be scared of losing was already gone.

But gods, he was _so_ fucking scared.

He couldn’t open the godsdamn cutlery drawer without the rattle of the blades making Marcus’s steak knife gleam against the moon. He couldn’t use the dish soap without smelling dog blood, or feeling the hollow place in his chest yawn wider.

It was bullshit. Marcus wasn’t here. Marcus couldn’t hurt him. And yet at least three times a day, he would shrivel the all-consuming warmth of Mercury’s rage into nothing and turn his guts to ice.

Because apparently Mercury was still weak.

The days were okay, he guessed. During the days, he had things to do. Eating was work, and bathing, when he bothered with it, was more work, and he had exercises from Watts to keep up his strength and stretches from Watts to keep him from getting contractures, and all of it kept him from thinking too much. All of it let him take aim at the day he’d be able to stand up and kick ten rounds right into Marcus’s fucking face.

But the nights were horrible.

Nearly every night, Mercury dreamed that he was drowning. Or not drowning, exactly. Lost. So lost in salt and the taste of metal that he couldn’t tell where he began and it ended, that his every motion felt feeble and useless, and incapable of moving him from where he was, of making him any less fused with whatever was trapping him. There was nothing he could take hold of to pull himself free.

And when he woke up feeling like his lungs would burst and his legs were being shorn through, that was still true.

It was true tonight.

His heart was pounding so hard that he thought it might beat out of his chest, the fear crackling out around him in a haze so thick that he could practically feel the walls pressing against it, trying to enclose it and failing. It didn’t begin or end where it was supposed to, and neither did he, not anymore, he couldn’t even fit himself into a shape that made sense, and he felt like the hole that had been torn in the wall, and—

And he wanted Em so badly it hurt.

He wanted her soft, worried eyes and her hands on his shoulders and then her arms around his back and her whole self pressed against him, because maybe that pressure would be enough to keep his heart in his chest. Maybe she could show him what shape he was supposed to be.

But she was gone. Like his Semblance and his wolf and his legs, _gone._

And Mercury was drowning.

He clenched his free hand tightly into the threadbare, scratchy surface of the mattress and rolled onto his stomach, pressing his pinned arm into his sternum, trying to force himself to be steady, to hold a shape instead of gasping like a fish flung onto a creekbank.

It didn’t work. It never fucking worked.

Tears were starting to burn in his eyes, and he was too exhausted to fight them, and maybe, right now, they were the less pathetic option. The pain in his legs was starting to dwindle back down to the usual steady ache, and his body went slack.

With tears ebbing down his face, he reached out again for something that wasn’t there. But something, at least, that might care that he was reaching.

In a voice as ruined and threadbare as the mattress, Mercury gave in to the weakness.

“Come back,” he whispered. “Em, come back.”

* * *

Emerald couldn’t sleep.

At this point, that wasn’t new. The reasons varied. Sometimes it was a sound from beyond the window that rang too much like boots on glass and concrete. Sometimes it was the itching of her casts, sometimes the weird, lingering migraines that had been preying on her ever since she’d overused her Semblance at the Tabards’. Mostly, it was the constant, gut-churning anxiety about what might be happening to Mercury.

Right now, though, it was the bedsore on her right shoulder blade. Daily and Lavender had been a little too diligent about keeping her from exerting herself during the past week. The itch had started within a few days, and before long it had turned into a sting, and when Lavender had inspected it over Emerald’s protests that she was fine, she’d absolutely lost her shit about the wide, indigo-tinted stain across Emerald’s back.

Daily had treated it, had sent Lavender on a run to the cheap walk-in clinic a few blocks away to grab them some more pamphlets. With Mercury gone, he’d quietly picked up the slack as their medic.

He did so many things quietly, but Emerald was trying her best now to notice every one of them, to thank him.

She wasn’t going to take anyone she loved for granted again.

With the itching and stinging of the sore keeping her awake and the “gut-churning anxiety about Mercury” factor coming into play to make sure she stayed that way, Emerald sat up slowly and inched her way over to the wheelchair beside the bed she shared with Daily. He and Lav had lifted the thing from the hospital within two days of the bedsore incident, figuring they shouldn’t keep her still any longer.

_They’re still fine with keeping me out of the loop, though,_ she thought bitterly as she eased herself into the chair, trying to be silent, the newness of the motions making her clumsy.

Even though the sun had long since set, Daily and Lavender were still awake by lamplight, hunched over the tiny round table in their minuscule dining room, talking. Planning.

Emerald wheeled herself over to the door and leaned her ear close to it.

“I still think that tunneling could work,” Daily was saying. “Every other house on that block is empty, so we can pick one and then set up a base for however long it takes to dig.”  
  
“We’re not a cartoon, Day.” Emerald could tell, just from Lavender’s stifled tone, that she had planted her face in her hands in exhaustion. “There’s sewers and wiring and all kinds of shit down there, and I don’t wanna pop up in the middle of Marcus Black’s house in a way that makes it that easy for him to play Whack-a-Mole with us.”

“We could wait till he’s gone,” Daily said, “if we posted a scout in the house across the street, then slip in, get Mercury, and run. We could get a few days’ head start that way. And we’d all be together if—”

The silence after that lasted for a long time.

“I still think we should just get ahold of a sniper rifle, teach ourselves to use it, and cap him from a roof over in his sleep,” Lavender said.

“And if you miss?” Daily said. “If he’s bulletproofed his bedroom windows for exactly that reason?”

“I don’t know, okay!” Now, Emerald could tell, Lavender was throwing up her hands in frustration. “I just—I don’t know.”  
  
“Maybe—maybe Emerald would,” Daily said. “It’s been two weeks. Maybe we should let her—”

_Please. Please let me not be useless._

“Day, I am sorry, but I do not trust her with one of those pointy straws you use to open a juicebox right now.” Lavender’s voice sank. “She’s done plenty.”

Emerald slumped forward, her forehead pressing into the doorframe.

_I know. I know and I’m sorry._

“But… she’s good at plans.”

“She _was_ good at plans, Day, but right now—” a frustrated exhale—“the best thing Green can do is sit on her ass and heal while we take care of this, okay?”  
  
“I don’t… I don’t know if Emerald’s the kind of person that heals by being still.”

“Well, tough for her.”

And the last thing Emerald wanted to do was hear her friends fight over exactly what kind of screw-up she was, so she wheeled back away from the door and levered herself into bed, her aura making it a little easier than it should have been as she struggled to get herself back under the covers like she’d never left.

She arranged herself as well as she could and then let her eyes fall shut as the muffled voices rose, then fell again. Lavender came shambling in and crashed noisily onto the bed on the other side of the room five minutes later. From the kitchen came the sound of running water, probably Daily washing out the teacup he’d been drinking from to stay awake this long. His tread was so light Emerald could barely hear it, and he slipped under the covers silently, like he was scared of waking her.

Once he was actually asleep, though, he wasn’t half that cautious. Tonight, like most nights, he rolled over within about a half an hour and grabbed ahold of Emerald’s left arm, pulling it tight to his chest.

Emerald didn’t mind. It meant that he felt it and woke up whenever she had fucked-up nightmares, and fucked-up nightmares… had not been uncommon lately. And after how she’d treated him, she wasn’t going to try and tear herself away from him, even if the trust he put in her didn’t feel like something she deserved.

The first time Lavender had gotten up to make breakfast and found Emerald already awake, immobilized by Daily, who was out cold and taking her arm hostage, she’d worn a melancholy smile.

“He’d hold mine like that, too,” she said. “When that feathery bitch with the flute had us in a cage.” She’d snorted and added, “Hell of a way to make friends.”

Thinking, now, of Mercury rocketing down from the rafters to plant both kiddy-sized steel-toed boots in Piper’s throat, Emerald couldn’t help but agree. Gods, it was the first time anyone had ever fought for her, the first time she’d fought for someone else. She’d never before in her life felt such perfect clarity as she had in the moment she’d struck Piper in the back of the head with her pick before she had a chance to stab Mercury. She’d never felt as relieved as she had when Piper fell to reveal her new friend, red-eyed and breathing heavy, in front of her. Because he _cared._

And then Marcus Black had beaten him bloody for it.

Emerald’s heart started thudding uncomfortably again, wasting adrenaline. She tried to close her eyes, to let sleep wrap around her, but the sight of Mercury turning his face away from her to hide bruises she should’ve understood earlier was burned onto her thoughts.

_Thud, thud, thud,_ a mallet against the inside of her ribs. It was getting harder to breathe slowly, calmly, like she was supposed to.

_He’s probably already gone,_ an ugly little voice in her head whispered.

With her free arm, Emerald reached out toward the bedside table, her fingers curling around the cheap lighter that Daily had brought over on her birthday, the same one he’d used to light the single red candle that she’d had an identity crisis over.

The candle had burned out, yeah. But the thing that made the light was still doing just fine. Yeah. Yeah. It could come back again, like it had never left.

She had to believe that.

Emerald inched up the headboard just enough that she could look down at the lighter without straining her neck. Daily let out a mumble of protest and tightened his grip on her arm.

It took Emerald a few tries for her sleep-numbed fingers to strike a spark, but then a bead of fire flickered into existence, dancing in front of her eyes, and a strange feeling of relief washed over her. She could bring it back. She could keep it alight, even if a draft came through, if she just kept her thumb in place.

So she did, even when that steady glow had burned long and bright enough to heat up the metal and make her thumb smart. She just directed a little more aura to the spot and kept watching the light.

Something shifted to her left, and her eyes tore away from the flame to see, through the stinging afterimages, Daily sitting up beside her and blinking owlishly.

“Emerald, that is a fire hazard,” he said, with the grave dignity of those who are less than twenty-five percent awake.

Emerald startled and dropped the lighter, and she guessed it was lucky that the flame went out before it could land on the sheets and catch there.

But the loss of the light still made her chest feel cold.

Daily scrubbed his hair out of his eyes, starting to look slightly more awake. “Why… are you making a fire hazard?”’ He reached out and picked the lighter up off of the sheets, turning it over and over in his hands and squinting at it, like he expected the orange plastic casing to answer him before Emerald did.

And she almost didn’t answer at all, because her reason for making a fire hazard, when she put it into words, was so stupid it made her ears burn.

But then she remembered that Daily had seen her with her kneecaps bashed in because she’d decided to rob one of the most powerful gangs in Vale completely single-handed with no backup plan, and she figured that she was past embarrassment, at least when it came to him.

“I… the candle you lit on my birthday. And I mean, almost everything I look at now—it reminds me of Merc. And I watched it go out, and I… I worry that he’ll go out. Like that. While I’m away. So I just keep making the light, because… I dunno. Symbolism, I guess. I know it’s stupid.”

Daily shook his head. “It’s not stupid.” He looked up at her. “But it _is_ a fire hazard.” He leaned over and tossed the lighter into a chair on the other side of the room where Emerald couldn’t reach it. “Just—don’t do it when we’re asleep?”

Emerald nodded. “Yeah. Of course.”

“Wus happennn?” Lavender slurred from the other side of the room.

“Emerald almost burned the apartment down,” Daily said matter-of-factly.

“Oh, good,” Lavender mumbled and rolled over.

He turned back to Emerald. “If you’re not sleeping, would you like me to get you a book or something?”

Emerald frowned. The words in even her favorite books had a tendency to slide right over her head when she was anxious, but she guessed it would be a step up from running the risk of torching the apartment.

“Yeah,” she said, “if you don’t mind. My copy of _Countess Fiancé_ and my booklight should still be with all the supplies from our tent.”

“I don’t mind,” Daily whispered, and he slipped out of bed, moving so silently that the faint sheen of orange where the moon caught his hair was the only sign he was there at all. When he returned, he set her booklight and a crappy, paperback copy of the book in Emerald’s hands—the nice hardcover one she’d gotten from Tukson had died side-by-side with her dictionary and her fairy tale anthology when Rex had destroyed her terrace—and a glass of water on the nightstand.

“Thanks,” Emerald said, clipping the grubby old penlight behind her ear and clicking it on with a press of a button whose plastic casing had worn away entirely. Daily squinted in the light and barely covered a jaw-popping yawn with his hand. “You wanna get back to sleep?”

Daily nodded. “Now that the risk of immolation has passed us by—” another yawn—“that sounds like a lovely idea.” He crawled back up into the bed and curled into a tiny ball with his back to Emerald, then burrowed his head under the pillow, hiding from the glow of the booklight.

Emerald patted his shoulder in thanks, and turned her eyes to the book.

_When Daffodil was born in the small country of Flora, there was very little about her to suggest that she would one day be the most beautiful woman in the world._

The words seemed to fall around her shoulders like a snug, worn old blanket, and it was easy to slide back into that plane of wonder and adventure and love that conquered all.

Until she hit the “As you wish” scene.

And then Mercury was sitting beside her with tea cake crumbs on his fingers. And then he was standing in front of her with eyes that had gone hollow with fear.

Emerald’s fingers went nerveless, and the book dropped onto the comforter. She wrung her hands, clasping her fingers together so they wouldn’t shake so much. Her eyes turned toward the window, the moonlight painting ragged shapes across Lavender’s sheets.

Out there, so close that it made her want to scream, was Mercury, but her stupid, broken legs wouldn’t let her cross the three miles of concrete that stretched between the two of them like an ocean.

_I’ll cross it for you, I promise._

She laid back against the headboard, her face angled toward the moonlight, and wondered if this was what Waverly felt in the crow’s nest of his pirate’s ship, gazing out at the thin white line of the horizon and knowing that beyond it, trapped behind the curve of the earth, was the only person worth braving the currents for.

_Merc, I’m coming back._

* * *

Mercury awoke to a world blurry with anesthesia.

And to Watts’s snooty godsdamned accent talking like he was narrating the end of a fucking nature documentary.

“Yes, all in all, this should be a _fascinating_ case study.”

Mercury tried to sneer, but his lips felt strange and numb. “Aw, shucks. Really?” he sniped.

Or, he tried to. Fucked up on whatever knockout drugs Watts had put into the IV in his wrist, Mercury only actually got out, “Awshuh. Reeee?”

Great. Even his words were gone. The last little shiv that he had to brandish against Marcus and Watts and the godsdamned universe had been blunted and dulled. Even under the smothering blanket of anesthesia, the thought made Mercury’s heart speed too fast.

“Ah, he’s awake!” Watts turned toward him, setting down the recorder he’d been speaking into with a slimy smile. “And how does it feel to be a living tribute to technological progress? I’d pour myself a drink for my good work, were it not for the fact that your father wouldn’t know a decent vintage if it bit him on the nose.”

Mercury just scowled. He wasn’t going to give Watts the satisfaction of watching him slur and fumble for words.

“You look so very like him when you do that,” Watts said with a fondness that had to be faked, and Mercury’s stiff, numb fingers balled themselves into fists. He gritted his teeth to fight down the urge to say something else that would come out mangled.

“Well?” Watts prompted. “Aren’t you the least bit curious as to how they look?”

_Does it matter?_ The itch of curiosity was there in his chest, yeah, but the festering bitterness that sprang from the thought of Watts treating him like some kind of science experiment dwarfed it. Mercury didn’t give a fuck about “technological progress” or what that progress looked like when it was tacked onto his legs.

He just didn’t want to be fucking helpless anymore.

But he needed Watts’s science to make that happen, and he needed to know how it worked, so with a grunt of effort, Mercury propped himself up on his elbows and looked down past the crappy hospital gown that stopped a couple inches short of his knees to see the sharp gleam of chrome.

It didn’t fill him with the same twisting vertigo that seeing nothing there had. Everything he felt now seemed… distanced. Not just by the anesthesia. Maybe his brain had just decided that there was a limit to how much bad it was willing to feel, turning his emotions down and down and down as the pain got louder.

Whatever it was, he looked down at his new legs, at the ports that wired into his nerves, and only thought, _Huh._

With Watts staring at him, he didn’t dare feel enough to let an expression cross his face. Even the slight tilt he’d felt in his eyebrows was more than he’d meant to give. He schooled his face back into a frown. It was safe enough.

Mercury glanced over at the anticipatory smirk on Watts’s face and bit down a curse.

“Well?” Watts asked. “What do you think?”

And Mercury knew that Watts wasn’t someone to be fucked with, but Watts’s eyes weren’t white. His trim, clean hands weren’t spattered with scars from where the skin of his knuckles had broken on bone.

Mercury wasn’t going to be scared of him. And he sure as fuck wasn’t going to kiss up to him.

So he just scowled again and looked back down at the prosthetics. They were _his_ now, godsdamnit, not Watts’s. It was _his_ muscle they were wired into. _He_ was the one who was going to have to take a fuckton of immunosuppressants to keep his own body from trying to kill the new part of itself.

_But everything that’s yours belongs to Watts now._ The voice that reminded him of that sounded too much like Marcus, and Mercury’s jaw clenched.

_“Oh,_ of course, I suppose you _don’t_ think,” Watts said. “Dear Marcus probably trained that out of you.”  
  
Mercury barely held back a growl, his shoulders tightening. He stayed still. He knew well enough to do that.

“Well, _I_ think that I’ve truly outdone myself,” Watts proclaimed. “You won’t find articulation like that in the highest ranks of the Atlesian military.”  
  
The brag probably wasn’t empty, Mercury thought. The prosthetics looked like they were probably worth the whole house—gleaming and sleek, without so much as a hint of a wire or bolt showing on the surface. And that surface was all armor, shiny and silver, overlapping and shielding the carefully wrought joints of the knees and ankles and feet.

It probably wouldn’t suck to send that steel-clad shin sweeping into Marcus’s throat.

“That shielding is stronger than bone, fully waterproof, and it wouldn’t burn up even if you took a stroll across the face of the sun. The Dust cores that power them are so efficient that there was actually quite a bit of extra room rattling around in the calves, so I took a liberty or two.”

From the counter behind him, Watts picked up _Talaria,_ and Mercury’s stomach twisted.

Watts was smirking at his greaves, and Mercury wanted to pry them out of his hands and bite him for good measure because _those are_ mine, _you snide pile of shit._

“I will admit,” Watts said, “they have a certain, er, _homespun charm_ to them, but really there were some quite elementary improvements to be made.”

Mercury shot Watts a look that he hoped would kill. It didn’t.

“So, I interfaced them with your prosthetics. There are chambers here—” Watts tapped on Mercury’s shin with two fingers, and Mercury’s old leg seemed to feel it somehow, the sensation making him jump a little. Watts went on like he hadn’t noticed—“that can be filled with whatever type of Dust best suits your mission. I understand you have a proclivity for air rounds. When you fire, the Dust will join the rounds in the chamber, assimilate, and take effect on contact with the target.”  
  
He’d changed _Talaria._ It didn’t matter that the changes made it work better.

All that mattered was that another thing that had been Mercury’s had gotten taken away and twisted.

“Now, what do we say when someone does us a great kindness?” Watts asked, condescension dripping from his voice.

“Fuck you,” said Mercury. All the anesthetic in the world couldn't keep it from coming through loud and clear.

The smile that stole across Watts’s face felt like a bad omen. “Of course! How could I ever forget? Like father, like son—so ruggedly individualistic.” He leaned back against the counter. “Fine, fine. If being reliant on others is so galling to you, get back into the chair yourself.”  
  
With a languid wave of his hand, Watts gestured to the wheelchair parked beside the operating table.

And Mercury knew a trap when he saw one. Sixteen years of Marcus made that look of fake beneficence on Watts’s face set off a blaring series of alarms.

But he was way, way too pissed off to back down now, not with _Talaria_ still in Watts’s hands.

It couldn’t be that hard.

Mercury tried bending his right knee. It jumped a little, but slumped back down. Watts had said that that would happen, that the legs would be temperamental until the microprocessors inside of them got a good enough handle on Mercury’s gait to work with him instead of against him— _because, Mercury, they’re a good deal more intelligent than you are._

_Fine,_ Mercury thought. _If you’re gonna be a dick about it, I’ll do this myself._

He twisted around on his hands, trying to angle himself so that his leg would fall over the side of the table and land with its foot on the ground. With a high-pitched scraping noise that made Mercury want to cover his ears, it started to shift, getting closer to the edge and then—

_Clank!_

Mercury let out an involuntary cry of alarm as his foot hit the floor and the leg attached to it—so, so much heavier than the flesh it had replaced—dragged the rest of him over the side of the table.

He caught himself with one hand, but the rest of his weight fell onto the new leg, and oh, oh fuck, the trap was the fact that putting weight on the place where a knife had sliced through his whole leg really really fucking hurt and—

The stars were knives, and one of them was carving through muscle and sawing at bone, and every blade of grass was a needle stabbing cleanly into his back, and he thought he might have been screaming.

When he came back to himself, his right leg burned like Marcus’s knife was still digging into it. Tears pricked at his eyes, and he fought them back.

He’d managed to land in the chair at least, his hands clutching the armrests as Watts peered at him from the counter. Taking fucking notes.

“Mercury, I trust you learned something from this?” Watts said, looking back down at his clipboard.

“Yes,” Mercury said, and the words tasted bitter. “I did.”

* * *

Emerald was leaning over the side of Daily’s bed in the pale morning light, retrieving a granola bar from the little stash of them she kept in the nightstand, when the door swung open.

She looked up to see Lavender standing in the frame with a stony expression. _“No._ Green, if I have to watch you eat one more of those things, I’m going to puke. This is an intervention. Put it down.”

“What?” Emerald froze, incredulous. “Why?”

“Sustrai, step away from the MegaHealth bar, and nobody has to get hurt.”

“No—Lav, this is stupid.” Emerald rolled her eyes, but Lavender was already crossing to her bedside, visibly intent on wrestling the granola bar out of her hands.

_Besides, I won’t be stepping anywhere anytime soon._ It’d be a month still before she could even get the casts off.

“Is it, though?” Lavender grav-hopped in close before Emerald could brace herself and snatched the bar out of her hand. Flopping back onto her own bed, she tore the packaging open with her teeth and took a bite. “Eugh. Cardboardy.”

But she still finished it. All of them finished all of their food, whatever it was.

When she’d swallowed down the last of it, her eyes met Emerald’s. “Well, that was miserable. And you keep doing it.”

Emerald cringed, feeling suddenly caught. She’d stayed up far too late watching the lighter burn last night while a migraine sang through her head, and now she felt sluggish and anxious and behind. “I—I just—they’re quick—”

Lavender’s voice softened. “Green—I know you only eat those things when you feel too shitty to want anything better.” She sat up and clapped her hands. “So. Intervention. Get in the chair.”

“Why? What’s going on?” Emerald asked, but she hopped herself up onto her arms and maneuvered herself onto the chair beside the bed anyway. In the three weeks since her injury, she’d gotten a lot better at it, and Lav and Daily had had time to get it adjusted well enough that it wasn’t too uncomfortable.

“A wholesome family breakfast, that’s what,” Lavender said, hopping to her feet and vanishing into Emerald’s blind spot, her hands coming to rest on the back of the chair and gently pushing it forward.

“That I will not have sullied by granola bars,” Daily called from the other room.

Even with only one of his fox ears intact, his hearing was eerily good.

Emerald rolled through the door to see Daily bustling from the kitchen to the table where they ate their meals and back again, his arms laden with bacon and scrambled eggs and golden, fluffy-looking biscuits.

Okay. That did have the granola bars beat.

As Daily was spooning the eggs out onto plates, something in the kitchen beeped, and his ear sprang upright.

“The muffins!” he blurted out seemingly to no one, and then he vanished in a blur towards the oven. A groan of disappointment sounded from the kitchen. “Lavender, you said you were going to take care of the cantaloupe!”

Behind Emerald, Lavender chuckled. “I think I might have created a monster.”

“You’re the one who’s going to let the cantaloupe dry out and taste funny!” Daily chided.

“Can cantaloupes even do that?” Lavender asked, wheeling Emerald over to her spot at the table, beside the fourth chair that always stood empty but that they always set a place for anyway.

“I do not know,” said Daily, bustling out of the kitchen with a platter of muffins—stacked into a little pyramid, like his provisions had been even when they’d all been little—in hand, “but it will be on your head if we find out.”

“Chop-chop, I get it,” Lavender said, unholstering one of her longknives and starting for the kitchen.

“Lavender, that’s probably not an optimal utensil for—”

Lavender only sped up. “Sorry Day, can’t hear you, it’s chop-chop time.”

Emerald and Daily both winced as the hum of metal through air was followed by a gory _splat!_

Daily shook his head. “My ears do not like that.” They really didn’t seem to. He’d tucked his chin down, and his ears—or what was left of them—laid flat against his hair. He looked at Emerald. “I’m going to go pick up the paper. Will you be all right alone with the, um—” another slice and splat sounded from the kitchen, finishing his sentence for him.

Emerald smiled wanly. “I’ll live.”

Daily rushed out of the front door of the apartment like he had a Nevermore on his tail. While he was gone, Emerald turned and stared at the empty chair next to her. She could almost picture Mercury sitting there, tossing a muffin from hand to hand, leaned back so far that he was in danger of tipping over onto the floor, and phasing through the bits of cantaloupe Lavender chucked at him to try and get him to knock it off.

But Mercury wouldn’t be phasing again. She’d felt that gnawing emptiness between his lungs herself.

Emerald’s fingers itched for the lighter.

_“Ta-da!”_ Lavender materialized in the kitchen doorway, a plate of cubed cantaloupe in one hand and an upraised blade coated in pale orange gore in the other. “How’s that for a non-optimal utensil?” She looked around the room, then froze. “Day?”

“Oh, Green…” Lavender set the knife on a coffee table and crossed over to Emerald, the laugh and triumph gone from her face. With a nod at the empty chair, she said, “He’ll be there soon.”

“But _how?”_ Emerald burst out. “It’s been almost two months now, and we’re not any closer to getting to him, and we don’t know how to fight Marcus, and he could be _dead!”_

Lavender took a startled step backward, but before she could say anything, the door swung inward.

Daily did have the newspaper in one hand. But his other shoulder was caught in the grasp of Roman Torchwick.

“Aw, kids, a full breakfast, you shouldn’t have!”

Lavender’s knives were out in a flash. “Let Day go.”

“Easy, Horns,” Torchwick said, but he kept his grip on Daily’s shoulder. Instinctively, Emerald’s hands reached behind her back for _Thief’s Respite,_ but it wasn’t there. It hadn’t been there for weeks. “I’m just here to wish the invalid well.”  
  
He drew his free hand from behind his back to reveal a cane that wasn’t his usual one, the trimmings green rather than red. Tied to the handle were three unbelievable sappy “Get Well Soon” balloons, the crinkly kind from the flower department of LargeMart that were shaped like hearts and kittens and roses.

“Great!” said Emerald, “so let Daily go, and we can talk.”

Torchwick went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “You know, this is a cozy little place I’ve gotten for you all, and what a cozy little family you are. I was hoping I might see some returns on that investment.”

“You told Emerald you wanted nothing to do with her,” Daily said, his voice tense.

Torchwick rolled his eyes and turned to Emerald. “Please, Sippy Cup, I know you’re an amateur, but I thought you’d at least be able to recognize when you’re getting downsold.”  
  
In Emerald’s mind, something clicked, a gear that had fallen out of place finding its teeth again.

She glanced up at Lavender. “Told you.” Emerald squared her shoulders, remembering the shape of Someone Who Meant Business, and turned back to Torchwick. “What do you want?”  
  
Torchwick smiled. His hand didn’t leave Daily’s shoulder, but it eased up. “You have a surprisingly accomplished little crew here,” he said. “Some terrorists’ kid who vanished from the police records…”

Daily’s face tightened, and he spoke before Torchwick could go on. “My parents were good people.” With a frown of defiance, he added, “Better than you.”  
  
“I’m sure they were, kid,” Torchwick said, unfazed, “but the cops’s incident report was never gonna say they were anything but murderous goons.” But his hand left Daily’s shoulder.

“Now, _you—”_ he turned to Lavender—“You were a tricky one to figure out, even with the mess you girls made of the mall four years ago. But three years before that, a Reynard Daily and a Lavender Gruff just poof right out of the records on the list of kids recovered from a human trafficking ring. Now, there’s not a single family named Gruff in this city, but you expand the search radius, and you find a nice little hamlet whose mayor has that name.”  
  
The look on Lavender’s face was one that Emerald had never seen before. Her eyes were wide, her brows drawn up, her knives shaking in her hands.

“Now, he and his wife and his curly blond children all look _very_ human.” Torchwick took a single step forward. Lavender took one back. “But _you_ —lemme guess, those horns didn’t come in until you were four? Five? Must have been very embarrassing for Daddy when he figured out the tru—”  
  
One of Lavender’s knives was quivering in the doorframe beside Torchwick’s ear. That stricken look hadn’t left her face.  
  
Torchwick switched his focus back to Emerald without so much as flinching, that easy smile still on his face. “I can see why you don’t take this one with you to negotiations.”

Emerald frowned. It made sense for Torchwick to research the people he was going to meet in advance, to know exactly what they were bringing to the table. But it made absolutely _none_ for him to show that hand immediately in a way that was calculated to escalate the situation. And even less for him to do that while bringing her a good-will token.

Unless…

Carrot. Stick.

He wanted them to be off-balance. He wanted to show off the power he had to pick their lives apart. He wanted them to be scared of him, and ready to agree with whatever he said.

When Emerald put it together, it was so petty she almost laughed.

“Oh, will you knock it off?” Emerald said.

“Knock what off?” Torchwick laid a hand over his chest in mock offense.

“Trying to downsell us, you hack.” She smirked.

Lavender glanced uneasily at Emerald, and Emerald smiled back at her, nodded.

_Don’t worry. I’ve got this._

_This is what I’m good at._

Torchwick’s smile turned sharper, but it felt less phony now. “Well look at that, Sustrai. You _do_ catch on.” He crossed over to the table and relaxed into the chair that was supposed to belong to Mercury.

“Come on, kiddies,” he said. “Breakfast’s on.”  
  
Emerald reached out and yanked the tower of muffins out of his reach before he could grab one. “First things first. What are you so desperate to get that you’d actually bother dragging yourself over to this side of town before noon?”  
  
Torchwick snorted. “I figured that was obvious, kid.”

Emerald just stared at him, holding her ground.

“The Tabards let you live! Like idiots! You’re a walking vault of intel with compromised patellas, and since you only made it as far as you did out of the goodness of my heart, I think I’m entitled to a share of it.”  
  
Emerald sat back, her mind working again. She had leverage now. How could she apply it in a way that would get her back to Mercury as fast as possible? What weapons would guarantee the death of someone like Marcus Black? What kind of trap could they spring? No one had ever fought him and lived to tell about it, so—

Wait. Someone _had._

Someone had fought Marcus Black and lived, every single day, for the past decade.

They could only kill Marcus if they’d already gotten Mercury. Okay. And to get Mercury, they’d need—

“All right,” Emerald said. “How about this: we give you the intel, and you help us figure out how to use it to get that Key. We get Mercury out of the house, and after that, we’re not your problem anymore. And the Key’s yours.”

Torchwick sat back, thinking. “Generous terms, Sippy Cup. If you break them, you know, I’ll have to—”

“Yeah, yeah, break more than her kneecaps, we get the picture,” said Lavender sullenly. She turned to Emerald. “You good for this, Green?”  
  
Gods. Trust.

She was sure Lavender hadn’t meant to give that to her again for a long time.

So she sure as hell wouldn’t break it.

“Yeah,” she said, sliding the tray of muffins back toward Torchwick. “I’m good.”

Torchwick leaned the cane and the shitty balloons against her chair. “You’re gonna need this soon, believe me.”

Before Emerald could reply, Daily spoke up, still standing, the paper, which Emerald had almost totally forgotten about, clutched tightly in his hands.

“There was something else,” he said.

Daily closed the distance between himself and the table and spread the front page of the paper out in what little space there was that wasn’t taken up by breakfast foods. “Justice.”

Blaring out at them from the top of the flimsy grey page was the headline, “SIGNAL STUDENT FALLS FROM GRACE” and, in only slightly smaller font beneath it, “Aurum Found Guilty of Sister’s Murder.”

“Thirty years,” said Daily. “They’ll keep him hooked up to life support, but—but they won’t even think about extracting him from the wall till then.”

“Hell, it’ll take them thirty years just to come up with the tech to do it,” Lavender said smugly. With a glance Emerald, she kept going. “And hey, he’ll get out just in time for our mid-life crises, and what better way to relive our glory days than by beating the shit out of him again?”

Emerald cracked a smile, because she understood. Lavender used jokes the same way Merc did, like they were a shield to keep out fear, and it was nice, to be inside of that shield.

The smile died almost instantly, though, because Mercury wasn’t behind that sheltering wall. All his shields had been taken from him.

They’d bugged her, sometimes, when they kept her out, but… he would be so scared without them.

Torchwick’s hand covered the newsprint, breaking Emerald out of her thoughts. “And now you kids have a lot of work to do if you wanna pull off a repeat performance.”

Emerald’s fingers went to the bullet around her neck, to the pieces of jade on either side of it. She could do this again. She had to.

“So, we’ll do the work,” Daily said. “Now somebody please eat the eggs before they get cold, I worry for them.”

Emerald smirked and then bit her tongue, because the reply that had sprung instantly to mind was, _Whatever you say, boss._

* * *

The parallel bars that Watts had set up in the living room stared into Mercury at eye level.

“Let’s try this again, shall we?” Watts said, just behind his shoulder.

_You’re not trying anything except my fucking patience._

In the month since he’d gotten his legs, Mercury hadn’t succeeded in reaching the end of the bars once.

He’d tried three times a day during the first week, and messed himself up pretty well trying. His legs had still been swollen, and his balance had been all wrong.

It had gone badly enough that he had developed a grudging respect and whole-hearted enmity toward the bars. Could the phrase “whole-hearted” even apply to him anymore? Given the fact that he wasn’t working with a whole heart anymore, he wasn’t so sure.

Watts came by from the Tabards’ hotel every day to check in on him and nag him and complain about Marcus’s lack of housekeeping skills. The place was cleaner than it had been in years just because Watts couldn’t stand the sight of the mess. He’d thrown out nearly all of Marcus’s liquor, scrubbed away the stain on the microwave that had been there since time immemorial (and somehow programmed the microwave to walk around the counter on tiny metal legs on voice command?), and filled in the bullet holes in the dining room table with some kind of alloy that glowed orange in the dark.

And during all that time, Mercury had been making little steps. His legs had healed up enough that he could sit up on his knees without feeling a knife dig in above them. And now, he could walk around on them, dragging his shins and his feet. He’d even gotten his fussy, cybernetic knees to bend enough that he could keep his feet off the ground and practice balancing on his knees when he walked. Now that he’d started putting weight on them and moving around, they were responding to him more easily, like they were getting acquainted.

It took him more steps, now, and more concentration, but he could move almost as quickly as he could walking at a normal pace on his old legs.

So, now, he figured the bars might not drop him on his ass with Callows’s laughter ringing in his ears again. He hoisted himself up onto the arm of the couch—gods, how fucked up was it that the couch was exactly the same as it had been when Marcus had tossed him onto it with his soul ripped in half, while Mercury—

Well, Mercury wasn’t exactly the same.

He wrapped his hands around the bars, pressed down hard through his hands, and hauled himself up, his toes—well, not toes exactly, just a smooth round of metal at the end of each foot, but he didn’t have a better word lying around—just brushing the floor. His arms had gotten strong enough in the past couple months that he could probably walk himself all the way across the bars and back without touching the ground once, but that would defeat the point.

A twinge ran through both of his stumps as they took a little more of his weight, but it wasn’t any more than what he felt when he stood up on his knees. Weight wasn’t the problem now. It was balance. His prosthetics wobbled under him, feeling more like glorified stilts than a pair of legs. The effort of staying upright once his full weight was resting over those thin points of metal drew sweat from his forehead.

But he held it. Just because Marcus wasn’t breathing down his neck didn’t mean he was going to start shirking his training.

Slowly, with a shifting of his weight that was starting to feel less unnatural, he drew his right leg forward a few inches, lightening up the pressure on it, and then set it down again.

_One._

Last night had been an especially shitty night. He couldn’t remember sleeping, just sweat and panic and his heart pounding for way more hours on end than should have been possible.

It was still drumming away right now, just a little fainter. But he wasn’t going to be weak. He’d had enough of Watts’s scorn for a lifetime.

Keeping his weight on the foot he’d just moved, he slid the other forward.

_Two._

“Mercury, I believe your goal is to _walk,_ not to shuffle,” Watts chimed in, and Mercury gritted his teeth.

With the next step, he actually picked a foot up off the ground and then set it down again, heel, then toe. His arms shook, but he managed it.

_Three._

Lift, heel, toe.

_Four._

Lift, heel—fuck.

Of all fucking times for his right leg to act up. Not the metal one. The one that was gone. It ached with the weird pin-and-needle feeling that it did whenever it was crossed under the other for too long.

His foot touched the ground, and then that weird, crawling feeling threw his balance for a loop, and he hit the carpet hard. When he landed, he didn’t want to get up. Gods, he hadn’t slept in so long, he wanted to sleep, and the afternoon light, it wasn’t too different from Emerald’s—

“I see you feel you’ve made enough progress for today,” Watts said coldly, and fuck it, Mercury would take it. It was all he could do to drag himself back up into the chair and start wheeling it back toward his room.

“I’ll be preparing dinner in the—I shall be generous and call it a kitchen—whenever you feel willing to grace me with your presence again.”

Mercury gave serious thought to flipping Watts the bird over his shoulder, but the pull of sleep was just too strong, especially now that the phantom sensation was starting to fade. He rolled up to the side of his bed, which was an actual bed now, because Watts had taken one look at Mercury’s years-old, bloodstained mattress and been discreetly sick in his handkerchief.

He’d even let Mercury wheel out into the backyard to burn it.

The new bed was at a height that it was easier for him to lever himself into from the chair, and he tumbled into it gratefully, burying himself under the _actual fucking blankets._ He didn’t even go through the hassle to pop the prosthetics off from the ports where they attached.

It was easier to sleep during the day, maybe because the light was different than it had been that night. Maybe because it reminded him of the stitching of the cow pillow leaving weird grooves in his face, and the sound of Emerald turning pages and mouthing the words to herself and thinking she was being quieter than she actually was.

He dropped into slumber like a stone.

And woke in a tangle of blankets and a mire of cold sweat and the sound of gunfire and the memory of Emerald’s blood on his hands only this time he hadn’t been able to save her and his chest was empty, and what shape was he—

Watts. Leaning on the doorframe. Staring at him.

_Fuck._

Mercury tried to calm his breathing, but he couldn’t, the fear was all too raw, and his mind was still half in the dream and he knew, right now, that he didn’t look like a weapon, just a scared, pathetic teenaged boy with no legs, breaking apart at the seams.

“I—” _I’ll make myself useful, just don’t fucking hurt me, don’t throw anything at me, don’t yell, I’m not weak, I know how this looks but I’m not._

But Mercury couldn’t figure out a way to say any of that that wouldn’t make him sound even weaker.

“You talk in your sleep quite a bit, Mr. Black,” said Watts, and Mercury froze, his breath petrifying in his throat. “Often at a frankly surprising volume. I doubt it’s a helpful trait in your occupation.”

Marcus’s boot crushing into his chest, making him struggle as the air deserted him. _“An assassin doesn’t let an enemy sneak up on him in his sleep. And he especially doesn’t sleep so noisily that someone across the hall can_ hear him.”

The memory echoed, and Mercury knew exactly what Watts was going to say next, even over the rush of blood in his ears.

“One particular syllable, in fact, comes up quite often,” Watts went on. “‘Em.’ Now, what could that possibly mean?”  
  
And Mercury knew how to work with this. He knew how to keep a story straight.

“She was—” and the knot in Mercury’s throat wouldn’t let him say “some street rat” like he was supposed to, and like an idiot, he ended up letting some of the truth fall in—“she was my best friend. She was—” he looked up at Watts—“she was who I gave my extra Vytal ticket to.”

A thoughtful look came over Watts’s face. “I take it Marcus was less than supportive.”

“He made me kill her,” Mercury said flatly. “When we were twelve.”

“You’re grieving,” Watts said, as if he’d just worked out the final step in an equation. “Not only your Semblance.” He paced into the room a few steps, then back to the door, chin in his hand. “And this loss, I assume, it causes you distress?”  
  
Mercury figured that the only answer that deserved was a vague wave at the absolute trainwreck that the nightmare had made of him.

“Of course. Mercury,” Watts said, “let me tell you what I’ve found about loss. It is easy for loss to turn you backward. It is primitively simple to stare and stare at what you have been robbed of and let your wanting it consume you.

“But _progress—_ that requires an engine. And an engine—from the rustiest assemblage of bolts to my very own innovations—requires something to _burn._ Your life, young man, has been nothing but kindling for that engine. If you want revenge. If you want to move _forward._ If you want to see the man who wronged you, who underestimated you, who denied you what you deserve, laid low. If you want to watch him admit, as everything he held dear snaps to pieces in your hands, that he was _wrong—”_ the green glow in Watts’s eyes was almost frightening in its intensity, but. _Gods,_ Mercury wanted that. He wanted to pry _something_ out of Marcus, even if it left his hands smeared with blood. He wanted to see those white eyes widen in surprise as his father finally realized that he had raised a deadlier weapon than he would ever be. He wanted to stop feeling tangled and weak.

“What do I do?” Mercury asked, his voice hoarse.

“It’s quite simple,” said Watts neatly. “You take the things you loved and lost. And you throw them into the fire.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Watts: Let me just project some things onto this child.
> 
> Tune in next week for... okay there's no fun, catchy way of saying "Emerald and Mercury slowly reckoning with their traumas in both healthy and unhealthy ways," but that's what's continuing to happen next week.
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading, and I'm excited to talk with you guys in the comments! :D


	26. The Only Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Team E_LD moves towards a plan to rescue their missing friend, but with Mercury sliding further under the control of Salem's cabal, will they be able to reach him in time?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: child abuse

Emerald wasn’t coming back.

She wasn’t.

Sitting in the fractured moonlight beside his bedroom window, Mercury told himself that, over and over.

It had been three months now since he’d seen her. And he knew her. Em was quick-tempered and reckless and impulsive, even if she was smart, and if she hadn’t snapped and come back guns blazing after that long… she wasn’t coming back.

And that—that was a good thing. That meant that she was safe, that Mercury had done the only job in his life that he’d ever wanted to do and that he’d done it well.

Emerald was going to have a life. A real fucking life. She’d go to Beacon, and she’d drag Lav and Day along with her, and they’d find some new stray to fill the gap among them, and he would pretend, right now, that that thought didn’t fill him with a bitterness so thick he nearly choked on it.

And one day, Emerald would be happy.

But Mercury wouldn’t be there.

He had another job to do now.

He had to kill Marcus Black.

Damnit. His foot was cramping again. Only, it wasn’t, because there was no foot there. Just the ache he’d always felt in his sole when he extended it for too long. Normally, he could just flex his foot back for a minute until the muscle calmed down. But there was nothing to flex and nothing to calm, and he knew by now that approximating the same movement with his prosthetics did fuck-all, so he just sat there with his arm braced on the windowsill and dug his nails into his palms and rode it out.

He'd been able to walk over to the window from the bed and sit down on the floor unaided, though he’d kept the cane Watts had given him a few days ago close by just in case untangling his prosthetics and standing up proved too much for his balance.

Watts wouldn’t be here much longer. Now that Mercury was back on his feet, there wouldn’t be any reason for him to keep Marcus away.

There wouldn’t be anything keeping Watts from putting Mercury’s skills to work, and there wouldn’t be anything keeping Marcus from hacking Mercury into smaller pieces if he refused.

Mercury rested his chin on his arm, his head tilted against the glass of the window so that his eyes turned toward the smoggy, distant glow of downtown Vale.

Emerald wasn’t coming back.

He couldn’t afford the hope that she’d come rushing back to hold him, to stretch out a hand that could pull him free of this mess. Not when that hope told Mercury to spit in Watts’s face and tell him point-blank that he’d never be his godsdamned property, that he’d never choose to be a murdering fuck like his old man.

But Mercury wasn’t a person who got to choose. He wasn’t a stupid little kid who could believe that anymore.

And he couldn’t survive being Marcus’s punching bag any longer. He just—he just wanted it to _stop._ And the only way to make it stop was to put his father six feet under.

That would be some good for the world, something he could be proud of. For Maura Ellwood and Vardan Roosevelt’s sister-in-law and even Meleager fucking Janus, who’d at least deserved to get killed by someone who deserved to kill him.

It would be the last thing in his life he could be proud of.

Mercury’s eyes slid up to the glowing shards of the moon trailing across the sky, and his memory turned them into the silver sparks of fireworks blooming over the Vytal festival fairground. There were so many ways that that night had been the best of his life. Emerald’s hand in his. The light in her eyes. The joy and awe running through the crowd like an electric charge.

The feeling that he could have a future that was as bright and joyful and gravity-defying as those lights in the sky.

That childish little scrap of hope had carried him through so many years now.

It hurt to let it go.

But that was what he had to trade away to get the chance to kill Marcus. He’d break his father’s skull, and then he’d take his mantle, or Watts would kill him for throwing it aside.

The moon glittered through the rigid lines of the windowpane, enticing.

Mercury turned his face away from it.

“Goodbye.”

* * *

Emerald’s casts came off halfway through October. The muscles in her calves that she’d built over years of springing from rooftop to rooftop had withered away to almost nothing in the span of a couple of months, and even though the pain was long gone, her body felt stiff and useless.

Having the casts off, at first, felt somehow worse than having them on. Sure, she didn’t have to wrap her legs in trash bags whenever she wanted to take a shower, but without them holding her in place, immobile, she had to see how weak she’d gotten, how impossible movement had become.

Spending hours a day just lightly pressing her toes to the floor for practice made her want to scream. The only way she could handle it was by keeping the lighter in hand while she did it, forcing herself to keep at it as long as the flame burned.

Or maybe telling herself that the flame would go out if she stopped trying, even if trying didn’t feel like it was doing anything.

It was another Saturday morning—almost not morning anymore—and another “family breakfast.”

No cantaloupes this time. Daily had added “melon being sliced through with a large blade” to his official registry of “No” Sounds, which included, among other things, the whistling noise the soap dispenser made when the pump rose back up too slowly, the growl of the disposal, and the nearly inaudible buzzing of a scroll in largescreen mode left on mute.

Instead there were strawberries and powdered sugar, and a quiche full of bacon and mushrooms and cheddar. Lavender and Daily were determined to cook their way through the entirety of the big purple cookbook Tukson had brought them as an apartment-warming gift, and they’d already made it a quarter of the way to their goal.

Emerald couldn’t say she was unhappy with the results. But she _could_ say that she was unhappy with the self-inflicted headache that was pounding between her ears.

Ever since she’d polished off her second slice of quiche, Emerald had been training her Semblance. Lav and Daily couldn’t see her now, not through the illusion she’d cast. It must have been weird for them, just seeing strawberries move by themselves and then vanish in thin air. It was even weirder for Emerald to watch them completely miss her eyes whenever they tried to turn and address her.

But if they were going to get the Key, Emerald’s Semblance was their best bet at keeping Lav and Daily safe. She wasn’t going to let it crap out, not on them. So, in addition to all the strength training and flexibility exercises for her legs, she’d been stretching her Semblance, too, trying to build up a deeper well of energy, one that would make illusions that lasted longer than a quick flash-bang to throw off an enemy.

She was doing pretty well now—she’d lasted eight minutes, even if she could feel her aura starting to slip.

By now, most of the dishes had been cleared aside except for their teacups. Lavender had taken to buying increasingly weird blends from the store just to see what they were like. Today’s tasted strangely like what Emerald imagined it would be like to eat an entire meadow of wildflowers in a single go.

In place of the dishes, the newspaper lay spread out on the table, and having combed through it from cover to cover without finding a single clue relevant to Marcus Black, the three of them were hunched over the crossword.

Lavender squinted, trying to read the latest clue upside down. “The singing snowflake? Is that a cartoon that aired while I was busy trying to eat tin cans?”

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” said Daily. “Hmmm. Five letters. Emerald?”  
  
Emerald sat back in her chair and smirked. It had been dozens of clues since she’d been able to contribute anything beyond vague shrugs that they couldn't actually see, and she was going to savor the moment.

“The Schnee with a record deal,” Emerald beamed the sentence smugly into their heads and winced at the extra effort it took. “Five letters.” The five letters flashed in the blanks before Lav and Daily’s eyes: _Weiss._

Lavender rolled her eyes. “Excuse us for not keeping up with the heiress whose company nearly got us enslaved.”

Emerald ducked her head. “Her sister’s cool, okay?” she mumbled, letting the auditory component of the illusion slip. Merc would agree with her. She felt a tug of longing, then a twinge of guilt. Because of Mercury, she’d been spared what Lavender and Daily had gone through when Pie and Piper had caught them. She hadn’t been locked in a cage so small she couldn’t stand upright for days on end, thinking she’d be shut up in a mine where she’d never see the sun again.

“So, uh. Next clue?” she said, backing down.

Daily opened his mouth to read it, but the sudden strumming of an out-of-tune acoustic guitar sounded through the wall.

Emerald planted her face in her hands and groaned, her concentration shattering. “Not again.”

Lav and Daily’s neighbor was an aspiring musician who lacked either awareness of or respect for the fact that every sound made in one apartment in this building was instantly transmitted to the neighboring ones through the thin, crappy walls. Daily had tried to ask him to restrict his practice to hours when the average human being could reasonably be assumed to be awake.

Even through the wall, Emerald had heard the guy scoff. “What, too much for your ears? Oh, sorry. Ear.”

If Lavender hadn’t been out on a grocery run, the guy probably wouldn’t have lasted the night. But Daily hadn’t said anything about it, and Emerald hadn’t known how to ask. She was, however, getting pretty good at quietly seething.

“Maybe… maybe he’s just doing an instrumental.” Daily said, his voice strained.

The warbling vocals that drifted through the wall dashed that hope to pieces.

On the table, Emerald’s scroll lit up. Torchwick. She answered instantly, putting him on speaker so that the guitar would come through loud and clear.

“Eugh.” Torchwick’s shudder of revulsion was audible. “I take it the virtuoso is at it again?”

“Unfortunately,” Emerald said in a tone of bleak despair.

“You know, taking out a hit on Marcus Black is a little out of my pay-grade, but this guy - if you kiddies happen to have some pocket change lying around, I’m sure something could be arranged…”

“It’s tempting,” Emerald admitted. “But I’m guessing that’s not the reason you called?”

“Right you are, Sippy Cup,” said Torchwick. “How are you little go-getters getting going?”  
  
Lavender rolled her eyes, but Daily spoke up. “We’ve been scouring the area around the Xiongs’ club for tunnel entrances for the past few weeks while Emerald’s been getting stronger with her Semblance.”  
  
“And in this scouring, you’ve found…?” Emerald didn’t care for the note of accusation in Torchwick’s voice.

“Jack shit,” said Lavender. “But that’s _going_ to change.”

“Hmmm. Sustrai, are you sure this lead’s not a dead end?”  
  
“Positive,” Emerald said, sounding more sure than she felt. But one snippet that she’d overheard made her believe that she couldn’t be totally wrong.

_“Can’t have her tracing it back.”_

_“We’ll have to blow it the old-fashioned way, then.”_

_“Now that Hildy’s gone.”  
_  
“Brunnhilde Argent must have had Semblance that let her manipulate those tunnels,” Emerald said. “They could shift the network around however they needed to, make new branches in a single night, close them off again when things went south. But she’s gone now.”

Emerald’s hand strayed toward the pocket where she kept the lighter, razor wire flashing in her mind’s eye before she stopped and clenched her hand into a fist.

“And that means they’re dead in the water. Every tunnel they blow up costs them in demolition charges and whatever cash they could’ve wrung out of the surrounding area. And any tunnel they build to replace it would take months. They’re not gonna dynamite a tunnel that profitable over me, not when I looked like that much of an idiot.”

“A compelling case, Sippy Cup. You _did_ look like an idiot.” There was a pause. “The second you find that tunnel, you tell me, and we’ll start talking battle plans, yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Emerald, wincing as her neighbor belted out the chorus of what seemed to be a power ballad of his own composition.

“You sure you don’t want me to—” Torchwick made a quick and surprisingly eloquent sound that evoked the slitting of a throat—“that guy. It would _not_ be difficult.”

But Lavender was already taking a more straightforward approach.

Namely thunking the hilt of one of her knives into the wall three times and hollering, “Are you aware that you will _die alone?!”_

The power ballad continued unabated.

“You tell him, Horns,” Torchwick said. “Till next time, kiddos.” With a beep, he disconnected.

“I swear to gods I’m gonna stab through the fucking wall,” Lavender growled.

Emerald massaged her aching forehead. “The blunt approach isn’t working, Lav.”

“Which is why I am bringing baked goods to our landlord every Sunday and telling him in great detail about how our poor, hardworking mother can’t get adequate sleep at night because that unfeeling hooligan is keeping her awake.” Daily took a sip of his tea, a tiny, proud smile on his face. “I project that he’ll be discreetly asked to relocate by the end of the month.”

Lavender’s jaw dropped, and she broke into an awestruck grin. “Day!” She cuffed him on the shoulder. “That’s _nefarious!”_

Emerald found herself grinning, too. “You’re an avenging angel.”

“It’s a victory for everyone involved,” Daily said. “We get some peace and quiet, and Mr. Butterman gets to tell all of his friends how kind and open-minded he is for helping the sweet little Faunus boy who he was threatening to evict this time two months ago.” There was a brief coldness in Daily’s eyes that Emerald had never seen there before, and his mouth twisted a little.

Emerald stayed quiet. It didn’t feel like it was her place to speak.

Lavender set a hand on his shoulder. “You took one for the team.”

“Yeah,” said Emerald, finding a little courage. “Thank you.”

Lavender took the tone and ran with it, kneeling beside her chair with a hand placed dramatically over her heart. “Our hero. A Huntsman out of legend.”

Daily cracked a smile. “What could my epithet be? Reynard, the Deceitfully Polite?”

Emerald snickered, and so did Lavender, and for a second, she felt a little bit of the sunny warmth that she’d lost when her terrace had shattered into so much glass.

She didn’t want to imagine a life without Lavender and Daily—their jokes and their breakfasts and the loud-quiet-loud-quiet flow of their words—any more than she wanted Mercury’s chair at the table to stay empty.

She’d never brought this up to them before. It had felt like it was just hers and Mercury’s, like even asking them would be presuming.

“Maybe he could be,” Emerald found herself saying. “A Huntsman. Maybe you both could. If you—if you wanted.” She looked down into her teacup. “If we—once we get Merc back. There are usually four people on a team.”

She glanced up to see Lavender leaning her elbows onto the table and smiling. “I don’t think I really have anything better to do.” Her eyes strayed upward. “Day?”

Daily was staring into his teacup the same way Emerald had been, a frown of concentration on his face. “I think… I think I might have better things to do.”

Emerald froze. She’d thought it would be the other way around, Daily happily going along and Lavender grumbling but rolling with it.

“What do you mean?” Lavender asked.

“I mean—” Daily paused, taking a breath, like he was trying to gather up his thoughts—“I mean that we’ve had to solve enough of our problems by fighting that we’ve gotten really good at it. But—we haven’t been able to fix anything that’s made those problems in the first place. We stopped the Golds, but the number of homeless Faunus kids is still so high, and those kids are still getting hurt. I’ve been keeping up enough with school things from the books Tukson gives me, and he’s said a couple times that I could maybe test into—a college or something. I think… I might like to see what I could do if I wasn’t always fighting.” He shook his head and turned to face Lavender. “But you—” his voice caught a little—“if you want to go be a Huntress, you’d be really good. And you should do it, if—if you want.”  
  
Emerald’s heart sank a little, but Lavender—

Lavender looked _shattered._

Her mouth was half-open, her eyes wide, like someone had just run one of her own knives into her gut.

But almost instantly, her face hardened again. She took her arms off of the table and crossed them over her chest.

Before any of them could speak, there was a knock at the door. All of them jumped.

“Oh, right!” Lavender scrambled to her feet. “That’s today!”

“Is it Tukson?” Emerald asked, still reeling under the sense that she’d thrown a bomb into their apartment, that the damage it had done was still unfolding.

Tukson had come over at least twice a week at first, to check up on Emerald and bring her novels and relay doctor’s orders from Frisby, to drop off new science books for Daily and occasionally be goaded into arm-wrestling with Lavender. But he’d been scarce the past couple weeks, and it was making them all a little nervous.

He did care, Emerald reminded herself. He wasn’t just leaving them. He knew about Mercury just as much as Daily and Lavender did, thanks to Emerald’s scroll.

Lavender said he’d nearly clawed one of his first editions to shreds when he’d learned the truth.

“Nah,” Lavender said. “Day, you can go.” Her face still had that hard look. “I need to work with Green today, but—but you can go do something important.”

Daily’s ear flicked anxiously. “Lavender, I didn’t mean—”

“I—I know.” Lavender’s head fell. “I just—go. Do—do something you want to be doing. Please.”

Daily opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Okay. I’ll—get the door. We can—talk when I get back.”

And the anxious, sparking feeling that had overtaken the apartment faded a little when the door opened, for Emerald at least, because standing there in the hallway, in old jeans and a chunky sweater without a LargeMart uniform in sight, was Cypress.

Daily gave her a quiet “Hello” and then skirted out the door around her, keeping his head down.

But Emerald couldn’t help but smile. The sense of relief that the sight of those knowing green eyes and those flashy, cat-eyed glasses sent through her nearly made her tear up.

“Well, hello darlin’,” and the twang of Cypress’s voice was the same as ever, and Emerald let out a laugh that was half sob.

“Hi,” she said weakly. “What—what are you doing here?”

Cypress nodded at Lavender. “Your friend here told me that you had something big happening today.”

Lavender scuffed at the carpet with her boot. “I thought you might, uh, want moral support or—or some shit like that.” She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, sorry Ms.—?”

“Just Cypress is fine.” One of those twinkling grins. “And I’ve heard and used words far worse than that in my day, Lavender.”

“So, um.” Emerald frowned. “What ‘something big’ is going on?”

Lavender paused for a moment before she spoke. “I’ve been getting in some more practice with my Semblance, meditating or whatever so I don’t trash any more mall roofs, and—I think I can use it to help get you walking again. I can toggle it fast enough now that it just feels kind of like—like a buzz, and if I get the right frequency, I think I can take some of the weight off of you without making you float at all.”

Emerald’s eyes widened. “So I could—I could get all my balance and stuff back on the front end and be ready to go as soon as I can put my full weight on my legs!” That would shave a full month off of the time it took her to be ready for a fight, a full month off of how long Mercury had to wait alone in that nightmare of a house.

She grinned, her shoulders unfurling from the hunch they’d slunk into during the past few months. “Let’s get started.”

“Okay.” Lavender bit her lip. “Just don’t—don’t get your hopes up, yeah? I don’t—I don’t know if I have the control.”

Emerald thought about Lavender letting Mercury read comic books over her shoulder, never turning the pages until he said he was done, even though she read faster, even when she’d just broken up with Emerald and just the sight of him probably made her want to smash a window with her horns.

“You have it,” Emerald said. “Now let’s do this.”

Lavender squared her shoulders and nodded. “Okay, then. Ms., uh, Cypress? Can you give Green your hands?

Cypress smiled. It was sad around the edges, but then again, what wasn’t these days? “I surely can.” She crossed the room to stand in front of Emerald’s chair and stretched out hands that had offered her plastic bags and ribbons and sternly pointed fingers, and Emerald’s own hands shook a little as she took them.

Her stomach leapt.

“Hng.” Lavender had her teeth gritted, her hands in fists at her hips. “Okay. Green, you should weigh about a tenth of what you usually do now. I think. If I can—keep this up—”

“You don’t have to talk if it’s hard for you, honey,” Cypress said, glancing over her shoulder at Lavender. She turned back to Emerald. “Now, let me help you up.”

“Whoa!” The slight tug of Cypress’s hands on her own sent her flying out of the chair in an arc, like her body was full of helium instead of bone and blood.

“I gotcha,” Cypress said, and even though the weightless feeling in her stomach made Emerald feel anxious, that familiar smile calmed her. “Now lower one of your feet for me, darlin’, okay?”

Emerald did, slowly, her knees aching a little as she extended them out to their full length. Her toes grazed the carpet, then pressed into it, and then she was standing there, upright, in the middle of the floor.

Standing. A stupid grin broke over her face.

Cypress shuffled back a pace, giving her room to move. “Wanna give it a go?”

Emerald nodded, and being careful not to push off hard enough to launch herself into the air again, she took a single step. Left foot. Then right. Another ache in her knees as her legs straightened out. But she’d done it.

Furrowing her brow, she did it again. And again. And again, Cypress guiding her steadily forwards and glancing over her shoulder to make sure she didn’t back into anything. With every step, she felt the impact run up through her ankles and her shins to burn in her knees, in the shrunken muscles of her calves. The strain was growing, but Cypress had backed up far enough that they’d nearly reached the easy chair where Daily did his reading. If she could just make it…

On the next step, she stumbled, her balance deserting her. Cypress caught her by the arms and steered her toward the chair, a little spark of alarm in her eyes.

All at once, Emerald felt gravity reclaim her, and she plummeted into the chair, landing in a heap.

“Sorry Green,” Lavender’s form had gone slack with exhaustion, and sweat was making her curly hair stick to her forehead. “Precision’s not my strong suit. Gimme—gimme just a minute and we can try again.”

Emerald sat forward in the chair. “Let’s do it.” Gods, she finally had something to do that actually felt like she was _doing_ something. She didn’t want to stop now.

But Cypress’s hand landed on her shoulder and stilled her. “I think both of you girls have done enough for now.” She looked over at Lavender. “Can I get you some water, sweetie?”

Lavender let out a bemused little snort, probably because “sweetie” was not something she had ever expected to be called. “Yeah. Sure. There’s glasses in the thing over the sink.”

The second Cypress vanished into the kitchen, Lavender slouched down in her chair, her head falling over the back. She looked completely wiped out.

Emerald wondered how much of that was the exertion of her Semblance and how much of it was the strain of her—it didn’t quite feel like an argument, but it felt like Something Bad—with Daily.

Emerald leaned toward her. “Lav, I think you should go after him.”

Lavender looked up. “He bailed on me, Green, I’m not gonna go nag him.”

“You _told him_ to bail.”

“He said we could split up!” Lavender said. “I just—I never thought after—I don’t want—he just _said_ it. Like it would be normal.”

Emerald tried to make her voice soft. It had been too long since she’d actually helped anybody. She felt rusty. “I’m sure that’s not what he meant. It sounded—it just sounded like he was scared of holding you back or—or pulling too hard.” She looked down. “Merc and I, we both did that.”

_Until it was too late._

She met Lavender’s eyes again. “You should go after him.”

Lavender stood up. “Right. You’re right. Yeah.” Her mouth twisted for a second, like she was struggling with the words it wanted to say.

“Your dad takes a special roadtrip with you just so he can dump you under an overpass bridge, and it’s hard to figure you’re not just inherently ditchable.” Lavender shrugged, but her shoulders were tense.

Oh.

Shit.

Emerald’s breath caught in her chest.

_Maybe it’s better that my parents didn’t get the chance to disappoint me._ No, that was a lie. She’d kill for a chance to remember their faces. No matter how they’d left her.

She tried to scrub the look of shock and pity from her face before Lavender could see it, and she must have succeeded, because Lavender just crossed over and set a hand on her shoulder.

“Thanks, Green.” She closed her eyes and said, maybe to herself. “He’s not ditching me.”

Emerald covered Lavender’s hand with her own for a second, squeezed it. “None of us are. He’s not going anywhere. And neither am I.”

Because even if Emerald had never known her parents’ faces, she was still going to hold onto her family.

Lavender glanced down at Emerald’s legs and let out a morbid little chuckle that Emerald joined in. “I’ll say.”

Emerald gave her a light shove. _“Go.”_

Lavender nodded. “I will.”

She was out the door by the time Cypress had come back with her water. With a sigh, Cypress drank it herself, leaning against the doorframe.

“You know, I thought I was going to have to hide in that kitchen and let you two talk that out for a lot longer.”

Emerald found herself mimicking the knowing smile on Cypress’s face. Of course she’d known what was going on. She always knew.

“I did too. This time last year, that would’ve been a shouting match” she said, “but Lav’s… she’s different, now.” Her fingers freed the lighter from her pocket. This time last year, she’d been living in another world. So had Mercury. More quietly, she added. “We’re all different.”

Cypress pulled up one of the chairs from the table and sat down beside her.

“Your friend didn’t tell me much except that you probably wouldn’t want to talk about Mercury, but…”

“I don’t,” said Emerald. Her fingers turned the lighter over and over and over but didn’t switch it on.

And then she found herself saying, “I miss him.”

And all the feelings that the lighter had kept at bay, the fondness—for his laugh and his stupid hair and the way his hands were careful when they touched her—that now stung with grief, the fear and uncertainty, the _love._ They all washed over her like a tide.

A tear ran down her cheek, and she couldn’t say anything more, and Cypress didn’t ask her to. She just sat beside her, silent, a hand resting on her forearm, while the sun rose further out of reach.

* * *

Mercury leaned back, bracing his hands on the counter for support. He could do this.

Two days ago, he’d managed to stand upright and then snap his right prosthetic outward in a kick that even Marcus wouldn’t have been able to find fault with.

Yesterday, he’d been able to carry out that same kick and then follow it up with another one from the opposite leg. His prosthetics were getting smarter.

Watts was a lot of things, but he was no slouch when it came to tech. Mercury would give him that.

_Okay._

_Here goes._

Mercury whipped up his right leg as fast as he could, all the muscles in his torso working to drive it through the air as quickly as the old one had gone. As it sped past, he let its momentum carry him into a roll, pulling his other foot off of the ground and letting him bring it up in a second kick.

With both his legs in the air and the world wheeling past, he almost felt like himself.

His right foot clanged back to earth, and his left foot followed, and then he was standing again, just like he had been when he’d started, heart pounding in his chest, his breathing a little heavy.

He closed his eyes and let himself imagine that those two steel-clad kicks had gone straight into Marcus’s face. Leaning back on his elbows, he smiled.

His kicks were the only thing Marcus had taken from him that he’d ever gotten back.

_And I’ve got nothing else left to take._

That kind of thought was what passed for happiness with Mercury lately. That wounded feeling in his chest wasn’t healing, exactly, but it was going hard. Calcifying. Sealing the pain up somewhere so deep that it stopped being real. The pain, but also the laughter and the fear and the love.

Everything but the anger, really.

And the snark. He wasn’t parting with the snark.

But other than that… the rest of what he’d felt—of what Emerald had made him feel—wasn’t something he could afford anymore. Just thinking her name made an ache in his chest, a cracking feeling that made him want to curl up small and cry again.

She made him weak.

And he needed to be strong.

Even if he wanted…

_No._

He wanted to kill Marcus. He wanted to be done.

Anything else he could want would just get ripped out of his hands again, and it would take more pieces of him with it when it did.

So he might as well throw it into the fire himself.

The front door swung open, and Watts stepped briskly through, in the process of peeling off some kind of high-tech electronic mask that displayed another face over his own.

“Quite uncomfortable,” he said ruefully. “Mercury, young man, know that faking one’s own death can be dreadfully inconvenient.”

“Uh… thanks,” Mercury said. “I’ll bear it in mind.”

“Excellent,” said Watts, and Mercury now noticed the large suitcase in his hand, which shouldn’t have made his stomach go cold. “I shan’t take up much of your time. Your progress is adequate, and I trust that it will continue.”

Mercury snorted. “I’m moved.”

Watts very nearly cracked a smile. “I thought, before my departure, that you might appreciate a parting gift.” From his pocket, he withdrew a vial of clear liquid with a dropper. Mercury took it, raising an eyebrow in question, not entirely sure that it wouldn’t burst into flames.

“Yeah?” Mercury prompted.

“It wasn’t lost on me that your sleep cycle is an utter disgrace,” Watts said. “And I can’t have an assassin under my employ shambling about in a daze, so I devised a solution that I must say is quite elegant.”  
  
_You_ must _say, huh._

“Two drops of that compound administered under the tongue should ensure you eight hours of fully undisrupted sleep.”  
  
Mercury blinked, then frowned. Once Marcus came back, it wouldn’t do for him to be knocked out.

“From which you will be able to easily wake in the event of any… adverse sensory input.”  
  
Gods. No more nightmares. No more cold sweat. No more drowning.

Mercury looked up at Watts, and before he could even think to stop himself, he’d said, “Thank you.”  
  
He could have kicked himself for that, for giving Watts another thing to hold over him, but Watts wasn’t sneering right now.

“I am not your father, Mercury,” he said. “I do not senselessly damage the things that are useful to me. Remember that.”

Mercury nodded, his gaze falling back down to the vial as Watts turned on his heel and vanished through the door.

_Useful, huh._

Mercury spun through the kick again, faster this time.

Marcus wouldn’t meet him in his nightmares anymore. Now all Mercury had to do was blot him out of the waking world.

A bloody satisfaction took root in his chest, and Mercury understood what Watts had meant by all his talk about engines. He could run on this, breathe it in, live on it.

He threw out another kick and envisioned Marcus’s blood staining the chrome.

* * *

Emerald’s left knee healed before her right one.

_Thanks for the armor, Rex,_ she thought the first time she hoisted herself up on a pair of crutches. By now, even her shattered right knee was up to holding her at half-gravity in Lavender’s Semblance.

She and Daily were in the dining room, mapping out new search zones on a map of Vale, an almost entirely demolished plate of ginger snaps beside them. Torchwick was getting so impatient that Lav was searching for the tunnels alone while they tried to find other areas that might be worth investigating.

“Okay,” Emerald said, “so if we start scoping out some of the major jewelry stores… Day?”  
  
Daily looked distracted, mouthing to himself as he counted something out on his fingers. He stood up abruptly.  
  
“I need to go check on something. Er, it’s nothing. It’s. Goodbye.” He sped through the bedroom door in a hurry and closed it behind him.

Emerald stared after him, a wondering frown starting to take shape on her face, and then the front door slammed open and she whirled to face it.

Lavender stood in the doorway, beaming and triumphant. “I may smell like hot garbage, ladies and gentlemen, but today I am a conqueror.”

Emerald grabbed her crutches and wobbled to her feet. “You found the entrance?”  
  
Lavender grinned. “Behind a dumpster behind a steakhouse.”

With a smile and a sigh of relief, Emerald swept the maps off the table. “You’re a godsend.”  
  
“I am, aren’t I?”

“Day!” Emerald called out, hurrying to the bedroom door as quickly as her crutches allowed and awkwardly pulling it open. “Good news!”

She froze.

Daily was hunched over her nightstand with the lighter in his hand and a stricken expression on his face. His fingers were frozen in the act of trading out the tiny, three-quarters-empty fuel canister for a full one, and understanding crashed down on Emerald like a ton of bricks.

She’d wondered, idly, how that tiny little lighter had managed to keep running and running and running without going dead even after months of almost constant use. And now she knew. It hadn’t.

It had burned out.

“How long?” she found herself saying.

“A while. I—I’m sorry,” Daily said. “When I knew what it meant to you…” his voice shrank. “I didn’t want it to go out either.”

Emerald crutched over to the bed, sank down onto it, and pulled him into a hug, both of them shaking.

"Guys?" Lavender said in the doorway. "Something wrong?"  
  
"It's - it's nothing," Emerald stammered.

She still kept the lighter in her pocket, after that, but she never struck a spark again

* * *

Mercury stood in the middle of the living room, the parallel bars having vanished along with Watts.

The only human contact he really had now was with the Faunus who showed up in Grimm masks once a week with groceries.

It was so weird to imagine Tukson wearing one of them. Weird to imagine him agreeing to work for someone like Watts.

The White Fang—seriously, weren’t they supposed to be some kind of civil rights group? What the fuck were they doing with _Watts?_ —came by once a week with provisions, which, _wow,_ guys, walking around the suburbs in masks that label you as part of a terrorist organization is a great way to maintain a low profile while making a grocery run. He was starting to wonder if they only put on their masks once they got to the door. If they had orders not to get too familiar to him. From what he could tell, they never sent the same person twice.

He was waiting for their latest delivery now, practicing his forms, spinning in place on one leg while the other flashed out in a circular series of kicks so rapid they churned the air into waves.

Once Watts let him have Talaria back, he’d be able to create a full windstorm with that move in seconds.

He wondered who he’d have to use it on.

Part of him just wanted to take the very first shot at killing Marcus he could get, so Watts couldn’t twist his arm and make a puppet out of him any longer than was absolutely necessary. But Mercury wasn’t deluded enough to believe he was ready.

And until he was, he’d play along with Watts’s plans.

It was a damn sight better than playing along with Marcus’s, he thought, his mind straying to the clear vial on his nightstand—he had a _nightstand_ now—that had kept him from having a single nightmare for the past several weeks.

He could cook for himself, now, and walk like he had before. He could fight even better. He hadn’t had a chance to put it to the test yet, but he was willing to bet that his lower center of gravity would work to his advantage now that he’d built up the muscle he needed to carry off his usual acrobatics with the heavy prosthetics.

Watts was probably going to ask him to put it to the test soon. He wasn’t the type to leave an asset just lying around, and Mercury didn’t have any illusions about the fact that he was just that—an asset. To Watts, he was a tool, and he’d get chucked on the scrap heap the second he stopped being useful.

So he’d be useful. Simple as that.

No more letting himself get "senselessly damaged."

He was rotating on the spot, practicing his blocks, trying to adjust to the longer pants he’d need to wear on missions to maintain his cover—he’d mostly been wearing shorts around the house so he’d have better access to his prosthetics for maintenance—when the knock on the door he’d been expecting finally came, followed by the familiar sliding of the deadbolt, the beep of the lock unsealing at Watts’s command.

Thank gods, he was running low on flour, and he’d been planning to make a tea cake tonight.

At least once a week, he made some kind of fluffy, sugary bullshit that would drive Marcus up the wall for himself, just out of spite. Half the time, the smell of baking filled him with warm, gold-tinted thoughts that made his chest ache, but he was getting better at pressing those feelings down, grinding them under his heels so that they compacted into something angry and unyielding. Something that would burn.

He threw them into the furnace under his ribs like they were firewood, and he breathed in the smoke that they left behind.

The only thing Mercury could get out of his good memories now was hatred for the person who’d taken them from him, and he’d take every bit of it that he could.

He crossed to the door and opened it. “Look, I hope you remembered to get the white whole wheat kind this—”

Mercury’s voice gave out.

Marcus was standing on the other side of the door. His clothes were dusty from travel, his lip curled in a sneer.

It took him Mercury only a split-second to school the sudden, animal rush of fear from his face, but he was sure that Marcus had seen it, or he wouldn’t have been smirking like that.

Mercury stood tall, like just the sight of Marcus didn’t make his stomach churn and his legs burn where they met the prosthetics. Now he could see that his delivery really _had_ come. A burly, dark-haired guy in a Fang mask stood a couple paces behind Marcus, cradling a bag of groceries like he knew exactly how dangerous the situation he’d stumbled into was.

He’d startled upright a little, when Mercury had opened the door.

And the long, black puma claws on his fingers had extended.

Mercury nearly gasped. He tried to catch the little spark of hope and fear between his hands and crush it to death. He made his face stay still.

That smirk still in place, Marcus glanced past Mercury into the house. “Well. May I come in, Mr. Black?”

Mercury turned his focus back to Marcus, eyes narrowing, trying to stay still even though it felt like flames were licking at the inside of his ribcage. “Of course, Mr. Black.” He slid sideways, offering Marcus a narrow passage through—the same slim, threatening gauntlet that Marcus had always offered him.

Marcus must have noticed the move too, because the smirk turned into a snarl as he stepped over the threshold, leaving Mercury in his blind spot for a split second.

Maybe a split second was all Mercury needed.

He couldn’t be alone with Marcus in this godsdamn house again—with the stench of liquor and the rattling of knives and the impact of fists.

He just fucking couldn’t. It would kill him.

Before he could think better of it, Mercury whirled, launching himself up into the air and slamming a kick into the back of Marcus’s neck.

Marcus stumbled forward and then rebalanced, twisting and catching Mercury’s ankle only for Mercury’s other boot to slam into his chin and send them both toppling to the ground, sliding into stances with their fists raised.

Mercury’s legs throbbed, and his chest thudded, but he made himself hold firm and scan Marcus’s stance for weaknesses, just like his training told him to.

He blinked in surprise, though, when he actually _saw_ a couple.

Marcus’s stance was a little rigid around the knees—he’d have trouble pivoting and dodging too many hits while staying light. And Mercury was somehow certain, even from a mile away, that Marcus was going to lead with his right.

_I'm not weak anymore, asshole. I'm not the little pile of bruises that called you Sir. That called you Dad._

_I'm what you're going to die of._

Mercury spun forward, ducking the right hook he knew was coming and aiming a kick at Marcus’s knee. It connected, and Mercury’s hand shot up to catch Marcus’s extended arm just before it could slam an elbow into his temple.

And here at close range, Mercury could really get to work, driving a series of quick, stinging kicks into Marcus’s legs and chest before Marcus’s free hand curled into a fist and punched him in the jaw so hard he saw stars.

Marcus freed his arm from Mercury’s grip and slid back a pace, stationing himself in the open doorway while Mercury regained his footing beside the couch. Behind Marcus, the yard was empty.

Tukson—if that had even been Tukson—was gone.

Fine. It was easier to fight without that flickering feeling in his chest anyway.

Mercury fought down the urge to lead with his right and darted forward, keeping his stance compact, dodging punches as he tried to get back inside of Marcus’s guard. Fast as thought, Marcus drew his weapon, and Mercury barely blocked it with the metal of his shin, and—

A ruddy tentacle coiled around his leg. Another seized Marcus’s arm.

The Seer Grimm twisted its grip on Mercury, making him overbalance and crash to the floor. It allowed Marcus the dignity of staying on his feet, but the coil around his wrist didn’t loosen, the fang at the end of it angling toward his eye.

“ _Tsk-tsk,_ gentlemen,” said Watts, and Mercury snarled up at him only to see the exact same expression mirrored on Marcus’s face. He looked down quickly. “I suppose this was only to be expected. It’s bad practice to kennel two attack dogs together.

“Now,” Watts went on, “I believe the senior Mr. Black has earned some vacation time.” Watts’s green gaze flicked down to Mercury. “And that the junior partner has a great deal to earn back.”

A pit opened in Mercury’s stomach. It wasn’t supposed to do that. He didn’t have anything left to lose.

_Except being better than Marcus._

_Except being someone I can stand to look at in the mirror every morning._

_B_ _eing someone Em could still—_

Mercury swallowed, tried to crush that pile of garbage between his lungs into a tighter shape. He didn’t have a choice.

He’d never, ever had a choice.

He’d just get used to looking in the mirror and seeing someone he didn’t like very much. Maybe, after a while, he’d get past “liking” and “not liking” altogether.

“Marcus,” said Watts, “retrieve the boy’s weapons, would you?”

Marcus scowled, but he did what he was told.

And dealt a kick to Mercury’s ribs as he passed him, because why the hell wouldn’t he. The fire in Mercury's chest grew stronger.

“I’m sorry to have intruded on such a touching family reunion,” Watts said dryly. Mercury and Marcus both scowled again.

While Marcus scanned into the garage, Mercury sat up and slowly got to his feet, keeping a wary eye on the tendril that was still wrapped around his leg.

“So,” he said to Watts. “How am I doing my earning?”

Watts smiled. “There are a number of… loose ends for our cause in Mistral. You’ll find individual files for the targets on your mission scroll, but suffice it to say, your job is to… trim them.”

Mercury kept the scowl in place even as he bit his lip and nodded.

“Now, there’s no need to look sullen, young man. It will be a busy month, but I’ve built in plenty of time for you to sightsee and enjoy the culture.” His nose wrinkled slightly. “Gods know you lack enough of it.”

Mercury said nothing, the word _month_ resounding in his head over and over and making his throat go dry.

“A month,” his idiot mouth repeated dully before he could stop it.

Watts chuckled. “I must say, I didn’t expect homesickness to be a contagion to which you succumbed. But not to worry, Mr. Black. You’ll be back just in time for Nondescript Winter Holiday, and you’ll have this lovely abode all to yourself.”

“Right,” said Mercury, and he understood.

Watts was keeping him away from Marcus. He knew, somehow, that the thought of putting his old man six feet under was the only string still attached to Mercury that would make him move the way Watts wanted him to.

How many loose ends would he have to “trim” before Watts gave him a shot at the bastard?  
  
The garage door slammed open, and Marcus barged through it, chucking _Talaria_ to the floor at Mercury’s feet. Mercury looked up at Watts, waiting for the tendon around his leg to give way so that he could pull his greaves on. But it didn’t budge. In fact, it tightened, he could feel the dulled sensation of it in his leg—not his prosthetic, but the leg that wasn’t there anymore, long-gone muscles tensing.

“I’ve put a good deal of time and labor into you, Mr. Black,” said Watts. “And I expect it not to be wasted.” Another of the Seer’s fangs leveled itself with his eye, like it had when he was ten, the night before the Vytal tournament.

“It won’t be,” said Mercury.

After sixteen years of training, he knew better than to disobey.

“Wonderful,” said Watts, and the tendril retreated.

Mercury lunged forward and grabbed his greaves, fumbling in his haste to fasten them on. They felt different against his prosthetics, less snug, but they were _weapons._

_Not helpless. Not weak._

Mercury kipped upright. “Bullhead’s at the usual spot in the woods?” Now that he knew he had to leave, he couldn’t see a single, solitary reason why he should spend another minute in this godsforsaken house.

“Indeed,” said Watts. “And I trust you won’t stray on your way to it.”

“No sir,” said Mercury.

“You’ll find new combat clothes and your mission scroll onboard,” said Watts. “Good hunting, Mr. Black.”

And Mercury sure as fuck wasn’t going to say “Thank you” again, so he booked it out the open front door as fast as he could, upsetting the paper bag of groceries lying abandoned on the porch.

For the first time in months the sun shone on his face and the wind rushed through his hair and the world burned gold and red with autumn, and he was finally fr—

No. No he wasn’t.

Mercury crumpled that lighthearted Fenri-under-the-trees, Emerald-over-the-rooftops feeling somewhere he wouldn’t find it. It wasn’t a feeling that he’d ever been meant to have.

He slowed to a walk and trudged up out of town, Watts’s “improved” _Talaria_ weighing him down like a set of manacles.

He didn’t notice the masked figure still leaning against the garage.

* * *

“Okay, Green, nice, just keep it from sticking to the pot while the water boils, yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Emerald, looking down into the roiling cookpot and prodding at the bowtie-shaped noodles whenever they got too close to the walls. Now that she was able to move around with just the cane Torchwick had given her, she could finally help out in the kitchen without cluttering the place up too much.

Tonight, she and Lav and Daily were embarking into the vast and uncharted waters of the “pasta” section of their cookbook, and despite the fact that all three of them crammed into a kitchen that offered about a postage stamp’s worth of floor space was probably a hazard, it was nice to have everyone all packed together, bustling and griping and trading jokes while the smell of garlic or pancakes or roasted chicken filled the air.

Ever since they’d had whatever conversation they’d had after the day Cypress came to visit, Lav and Daily were always at each other’s elbows. Whatever tie it was that bridged the mismatch between them, it seemed stronger now. Like family. Like blood.

Lavender went back to shredding parmesan with so much vehemence that her arm blurred and the wild mass of her hair shook, while Daily flitted here and there, getting the spices together, pouring the milk into a saucepan, grousing about how hard it had been to find fresh basil this time of year, now that the winds had turned cold and the nights were getting longer.

Lavender had just finished pouring a mountain of parmesan into the saucepan when a heavy knock sounded at the door. All three of them jumped, Emerald nearly upsetting the pasta pot with her elbow when she landed on her bad knee and felt it twinge.

Again, that urgent knocking, and it didn’t let up this time.

“Maybe our neighbor knows I ratted him out to Mr. Butterman?” Daily whispered, an almost contrite look in his eyes.

Somehow Emerald felt that that wasn’t the case. “I’ll get it,” she said, “you guys just keep an eye on the pasta. And uh, maybe be ready to throw boiling water on an intruder.”  
  
“No offense, Green, but we are _not_ sacrificing the farfalle for you.”

Emerald rolled her eyes and set out for the door, wishing she had time to duck across the way into her bedroom and grab _Thief’s Respite_ from its place under the edge of the mattress. The door was quivering on its hinges as Emerald undid the latches, and she put her weight on her left foot and swept her cane up into her hand, ready to put as much aura as she could into an overhand strike with it. She’d only had a couple lessons in using it with Torchwick, but it was better than nothing.

She pulled the door open, and Tukson barreled through in a blur, almost bowling her over and very nearly taking a cane to the cranium in the process.

He was wearing his White Fang mask—it had actual fangs, curving down to his mouth—and he stumbled to a halt in the middle of the room, out of breath. His head turned Emerald as he pulled it from his face.

“Mercury,” he said. Emerald’s jaw went slack. She froze in place, cane still upraised. “I saw Mercury.”

From the kitchen came the sound of a spatula hitting the floor with a _splat,_ and then Lav and Daily were wedged into the doorway, staring at Tukson with wide eyes.

Emerald powered through the thunderclap of fear and want and sadness that had detonated over her head and said, “Tell me everything.”

Daily rushed back into the kitchen just in time to save the pasta and reemerged with four towering platters of it with a speed that defied the laws of space and time.

“This feels like a conversation that will require food,” he said, laying them all down at the table.

But for once in her life, Emerald could care less about food.

Mercury. Mercury was alive.

_Mercury_ was _alive._

“How?” she asked. “When? Was he—did you talk to him? Is he—?”

She didn’t know how to put the question into words.

_Did he look like he could remember how to smile? Does he still walk with his chin up and his shoulders square like he’s daring the world to pick a fight?_

_Or does he still look like he’s been spun out of blood and glass? Like a touch could break him?_

_Or does he look broken?_

Tukson stuck out his hand in a soothing gesture, his shoulders lowering like he was starting to calm down. “I’ll start from the beginning. Does that sound good?”

Emerald glanced at Lavender and Daily. When they nodded, she did too, and she stuffed her mouth with pasta to fight down the already powerful urge to interrupt, to ask Tukson to skip ahead.

Even the smallest piece of intel he had might be the thing that finally got Mercury out of that house, and she needed to hear all of it.

“You’ll have noticed I haven’t been around so much in the past month.”

Lavender and Daily exchanged a glance. They’d been deliberating the pros and cons of sending him a muffin basket to lure him back to visit more often just that afternoon.

“Yeah.” Lavender shrugged. “A little.”

“Our new Leader in the Vale branch has made a deal recently that I—” Tukson’s face twisted into something that was almost a sneer—“take some issue with, and we’ve all been kept very busy. The past couple weeks, we’ve been sending a different person out each Saturday to deliver a provision run. To the suburbs.”

Emerald leaned forward.

“I thought it sounded like it might link up to what you told me about Mercury somehow, so when the time came this week, I volunteered. I got the order, I brought it to the house, I put on my mask like they told me, and then somebody else was already there, knocking.

“It was Marcus Black.”  
  
Emerald’s throat closed up. Her fingers went stiff around her fork. By the time Tukson finished telling her about the fight Mercury had had with his father, about the smooth Atlesian voice that had ordered them apart and sent Mercury sprinting out of the house, she’d bent the whole fork in half in a flash of green aura.

It took her a minute, afterwards, to find her voice.

Lavender got there first. “So Wolfboy was alone in the house. That’s good, right? If he’s been on his own this whole time, then maybe…”

Emerald swallowed, trying to crush down the hope. She’d seen the satisfied smirk on Marcus Black’s face after he’d ripped out part of his own son’s soul with his bare hands.

She couldn’t let herself believe that Mercury had made it through unscathed.

“Where were they sending him?” she asked.

“I missed some of it,” Tukson said apologetically. “The garage door slammed and I lost focus. I don’t know where they’re sending him, or why. But I know when he’s coming back, and I know when Marcus will be gone again.”

“Nondescript Winter Holiday,” Emerald said, and something inside of her clicked. That was data. Better than that, it was a _deadline._ It was something to plan towards.

And when she wasn’t too busy getting her kneecaps shattered, Emerald was fucking _excellent_ at plans.

She started putting a real dent in the pasta. She’d have a lot of thinking to do tonight, and she’d need fuel.

That, and the pasta was heavenly.

Maybe—maybe she could make it for Mercury, when they got him back, since he baked more than he cooked. (For the first time in months, it was a _when_ and not an _if_ in her mind). A thought struck her, then, and she turned back to Tukson, and of all the questions she could ask, this one seemed the most important.

“What groceries were in the order you delivered?”

Tukson tilted his head back. “Some cranberries, I think. And oranges. There was a big fuss in the mission parameters about getting the right kind of bread flour.”

The tea cake he’d made her as his apology when they were twelve.

Emerald let out a hiccupping laugh as her eyes stung, and the feeling in her chest was so strong that she had to draw her knees up into her chair to contain it.

Some part of the boy who'd stolen a candy bar was still holding on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tune in next week for the mid-arc finale! I'm so excited to share it, it's about time these kids got some payoff. There's so much payoff, in fact, that it's going to have to be split into a double upload, which I'll post the same way I did with the first chapter of this arc, the first half going up Friday morning and the second on Saturday night.
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading, and I'm excited to talk with you guys in the comments :D


	27. Get It Back, Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which E_LD risks all for Mercury.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the mid-arc finale! Happy reading!
> 
> cw: Action violence

“Sippy Cup, we have a problem.”

Emerald wasn’t sure why Torchwick had pulled her aside into the rickety little office affixed to the warehouse where he’d been strategizing with her and Lav and Daily and poking holes in their attack tactics for the past few weeks, but based on that lead-in, she wasn’t optimistic.

“Yeah?” she said. She’d burnt off enough aura in her training bouts that she was leaning pretty heavily on her cane. Torchwick had looked physically pained at all her attempts to employ it as a weapon (“I will pay you double to stop making me bear witness to the tragedy that is your blocking technique”) so if it came to a fight, she’d just break out _Thief’s Respite_ like she always did and count on her aura to shore up her knee.

Torchwick slouched back against the table where they’d started their planning, before Daily had dragged all the slowly expanding maps they’d charted of the tunnel system out into the main warehouse so that Lavender could pace while they worked.

“Griselda Argent’s back in town. No one knows where she went or why. The only clear thing is that she is _pissed._ ”

_Can nothing in my life go smoothly? Once? Just once?_

At that question, Emerald figured the gods were laughing so hard they couldn’t even summon up the ability to say _No._

Torchwick had briefed Emerald on Griselda Argent back when she’d struck her first deal with him, not as comprehensively as he had with the Tabards he actually expected her to run into, but the brief impression she’d got hadn’t been pleasant.

 _“Griselda Argent. Brothers, I do_ not _relish the thought of her taking over the family business.”_

 _“Because you think she’ll outsmart you?”_ By that point in the conversation, Emerald had really just been looking for a fight.

But Torchwick hadn’t taken the bait.

_“Because that godsdamned Semblance gives me the heebie-jeebies, Sippy Cup. Anybody whose special superpower is giving people a first-class ticket to Traumaville has gotta be a little bit bent on the inside, if you take my meaning.”_

Emerald sighed and shook out the tension in her shoulders. She’d figure out a way around this. Nondescript Winter Holiday was only a week away. The whole city glowed red and green and silver, and Mercury was coming _home._ She wouldn’t leave him in that house any later.

“What does that mean for us?” Emerald asked.

“Well, Sustrai,” Torchwick said bitterly. “It means that you _do not engage_ the Tabards if she’s in the field of play. Miller and Clark and the kiddo, they’re manageable, especially if your friends stick to their training. Griselda Argent is a full Huntress. Beacon diploma and everything. Marcus Black chewed her up and spat her out by the looks of it, but I’d bet ten-to-one that that was only because he yoinked that Semblance right off the bat.”

 _“Yoinked?”_ Emerald wrinkled her nose.

“Save all critiques of my diction for the end of the presentation, ‘kay kid? That girl will eat you and your little friends for breakfast given thirty seconds. But you’re in luck about one thing.”

Emerald looked up sharply. “We are?”

“Griselda Argent is her mother’s daughter. And that means she’s a fancy dame—”

“ _Dame?_ Did you really just peel yourself out of a noir novel?”

“Sippy Cup, what did I say about critiques?”

Emerald rolled her eyes but went silent.

“She likes being too good to get her hands dirty. She hasn’t even shown her face once since she got back—I wouldn’t even know she was in Vale if I didn’t have such a brilliantly assembled spy network. That girl wears opera gloves, and she snipes her targets from a distance, and the last thing she’s going to want to do on a nightly basis is get her pretty silver skirts all muddy. Priss.

“So, the chances of her actually being in the raiding party are low. But if you botch it enough that her minions have the chance to call for help—”

“That won’t happen,” Emerald said solidly. She frowned. Everything Torchwick had told her… it was bad news, yes, but it wouldn’t affect their strategy too seriously. They’d already planned to be quiet and quick. There was no reason for him to share this with her apart from Lav and Daily, not unless there was something more.

Bracing herself for the other shoe to drop, she asked, “Why are you telling _me_ this?”

Torchwick took off his hat, twirled it ruefully. “Because, Sippy Cup, this development significantly decreases your chances of having any kind of happily ever after.”

Emerald snorted. “They’re low enough already. If she wants to kill me, she can get in line.”

“See, that’s the problem, Sippy Cup. She actually _will._ You’ve got your cute little ploy to keep your friends out of the line of fire, but you? You’re walking out of this with a bounty on your head. Right now, the Tabards need every last little scrap of credibility they can get their hands on, and you're making yourself a repeat offender against them. Now Miller and Clark, they’re grunts. They might give up after you send a hitman or two back with some fun spinal injuries, but Argent? She was born and raised in the biz, and she won’t stop until you’re dead. _Especially_ not now that that syndicate is the only legacy of Alyson Rothschild she's got left. Only person has ever survived having a hit taken out on him by the women of that family, and he's far beyond your league kid.” He flourished a hand.

Emerald’s eyes narrowed. “You just… can’t not brag, can you?”

“False humility is a pox, Sustrai, and I refuse to indulge in it.” He frowned. “But I know talent when I see it. And it’s written all over you, kid. I won’t lie, I want that Key something fierce. But in the long run… I could see you being an even more profitable investment. And it’s looking more and more like you’re gonna end up dead before I can find out whether or not that’s true.

“So I have a proposition for you. Think of it as an internship. I let you and your little pals off the hook about the Key. And you come work for me. You and me both get richer, you learn the trade, you don’t piss Neo off… and if it happens to work out, well, I need someone to leave with my vast empire once I’ve racked up enough cash to retire to a private island. You’d have to get rid of that pesky righteous streak, but… you could be a half-decent someone to leave it to.”

Emerald knew it was a ridiculously good offer. The kind of thing street kids like her could only dream of. The keys to the kingdom. Roman Torchwick, in all his bravado, admitting that she could be _Someone._

And she did not give a single shit. She cared so little that she could even be calm about refusing him.

That wasn’t the Someone she wanted to be.

“Thank you,” she said. “Really. I understand—it’s so much. But I know what I want to do. I’m going to get Mercury. And I’m going to stay with my friends. And I’m going to be a Huntress.”

Torchwick’s face hardened. “Lawful or dead. What great options you have ahead of you, Sippy Cup.”

“It’s what I want.”

“Is it what you want to die for?”  
  
Emerald gritted her teeth. “I would do _anything_ to get Mercury back.” And the ache in her chest told her that that wasn’t a lie. “And I _will.”_

"How're the knees?" Torchwick asked, and Emerald frowned, because that seemed beside the point.

"They're fine," she said. "The right one's stiff a lot, and I've had to adjust my landings strategy, but -" she shrugged - "we've accounted for it."

"You know, if you're not careful with it, it'll be like that forever," Torchwick said. "And if you keep pulling the same risky crap you always pull, it'll fuck you up so entirely that you'll never fight again." He paused for a moment, like he was weighing something in his mind. "Sustrai, do you know how I'm standing here, right now?"

Emerald shook her head.

"I moved _on._ I was your age, and I was just as scrawny and desperate as you are now. Like, _gods,_ I look at you and I cringe, because the mirror is _unflattering._ Anyway, I was all those things. And I had my right knee shattered all to hell and nowhere to go because I'd tried my hand at robbing the people who taught me the ropes. Because I wanted to be _great."_ Both Torchwick's hands flared out, like they were trying to write the word in fireworks. "Miller went easy on me and only took one. He had a soft spot, I think. Ginger solidarity, maybe. Or me looking after Sonny when he was out.

"And oh _gods,_ I felt like shit, and you know what I wanted to do?"

"What?"

"There was a part of me, Sustrai, that wanted to crawl _back._ Even though I knew at best they'd never let me rise above grunt work, if they didn't kill me on the spot. Because whatever you think is home when you're little is a hell of a place to leave. But you _have_ to leave it if you want to be anything but a chump. Marc Mark Two - "

"Mercury," Emerald said testily.

"Mercury got you through a few rough years there, I bet. I bet he feels a whole lot like home. But if you wanna get old enough to be a grown-up? You gotta fly the nest. And if you look back, you fall."

Emerald frowned, looking down at her cane. After a moment, a grim smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "You know, that was a really good try."

Torchwick's visible eye narrowed. "But?"

"But Mercury's more than just my home. He's a person. And he's hurt. And I _won't_ be the kind of person who leaves a friend in pain to rot."

Torchwick sighed, setting his hat back on his head. There was a something in those flashing green eyes that was almost sad. “Well then, Sippy Cup. When the time comes, I’ll set a real nice bunch of poppies on your grave.”

Before Emerald could say anything, he squared his shoulders, twirled his cane, and sauntered back out the door.

“All right, kiddos!” He spread his arms and called out to Lav and Daily. Lavender was ricocheting back and forth through the air, knives drawn, practicing quicker changes in direction with her Semblance, and she zoomed right back down for a neat landing the second he called. Daily had established a nest on the floor, the maps laid out around him as he frowned. “We have an exciting new development to account for!”

Once the “exciting new development” had been accounted for, though, Daily was still frowning.

“What’s with the face, Half-Pint?” Torchwick asked.

“Why three scrolls?” Daily asked. “Emerald said the Tabards brought three with them. But if they only need one copy of the Key to break into any building in town, why bring more copies that could get stolen with them? It’s so inefficient and risky, and it’s driving me out of my mind.”

Glancing at Torchwick, Emerald tilted her head to the side, thinking. “No one gets as high up in crime as the Tabards have by being inefficient and risky. They must be taking them for a reason.”

Torchwick brought a hand to his chin in thought. “Hm. I’m a little disappointed I didn’t think of that myself.”

“Maybe you’re losing marbles in your old age,” said Lavender, who just never seemed to have received the memo that Torchwick wasn’t someone to provoke lightly.

“Well, Horns, I still have enough marbles to see two possibilities.”

“Yeah?” Emerald prompted.

“Either two of those scrolls are decoys, or you need all three to operate the Key.”

“Like when Atlas launches a missile,” Daily said.

“Sure, kid, if you wanna pick the most morbid simile possible. It could be either, and I’m leaning toward the first choice, but it doesn’t really matter either way. All it means is that if you kids want that Key for certain, you need all three of those scrolls.”

“Goodie,” said Lav. “More planning. I love planning. It in no way makes me want to charge a brick wall.”

“And it’s gonna be the only thing keeping you from getting as splattered as Sippy Cup’s knees,” Torchwick shot back.

And on that optimistic note, they got to work.

As they packed up to head back to the apartment while the sun lowered, Torchwick drew Emerald aside again.

“Here,” he said, and he shoved something into her hand.

Emerald squinted down at it. A Dust round. The right size for a shotgun, and it flickered green and purple where it caught the light.

“I’ve been doing some, uh… _light collecting_ of Dust lately, and this one’s top-shelf. So top-shelf that I can’t afford to give you more than one.”  
  
“What is it?” Emerald asked.

“Fired out of that cane?” Torchwick nodded at the one in her hand. “An instant tunnel block. Makes a gravity well to pull down the walls, fills in the gaps with earth. If this thing goes sideways, kid, you fire that. And you _run.”_

Emerald closed her hand around the bullet. “Thank you.”

She was surprised when she realized she actually meant it.

Torchwick’s mouth twisted, and he stepped back. “Save your breath and do what I’m paying you for.”

He turned on his heel and walked briskly away, vanishing through the far door of the warehouse as the last rays of the sun gave out.

And then, well—it was a week before the heist. Then six days, then five, then four…

And then the moon was rising on the night of Nondescript Winter Holiday, and Emerald, Lavender, and Daily were creeping through the softly lit streets of downtown Vale, heading for the Xiongs’ club. Emerald’s heart thudded in her chest, making it feel like static was crackling through her body as the icy wind slipped past her. She nearly envied the thick bomber jacket that Lav had picked up on their latest thrift store run, but she wouldn’t trade the one she was wearing now—the one that had the emblem Mercury had sewn for her safety-pinned to the back of it—for anything.

Five months. Five months since she’d seen Mercury. She’d never gone so long without seeing him—without his smirk and his crossed arms and the faint smell of smoke in his hair—since they’d been tiny.

Two hours. It seemed impossible that such a tiny inlet of time stood between the two of them.

She didn’t let herself imagine what it would be like to see him again. Anything beautiful she thought up would crush her if she failed, and anything horrible would make her stomach twist up with dread when she needed to be focused on the heist.

But the static in her chest kept building anyway. Whether it was hope or fear, she wasn’t sure.

The entrance Lavender had found lay beside a dumpster not unlike the one Emerald had spent nearly two years sleeping behind. A wide crack ran through the slab of sidewalk beside the dumpster, and while Emerald and Daily covered their mouths and noses, Lavender wedged her knives into the seam and crowbarred it open with gritted teeth.

“Your chariot awaits,” she said, gesturing down at the dark, mud-slick tunnel beneath them like it was a sports car they’d won on a quiz show.

Emerald smirked. “Thank you, kind sir.”

She was the first to jump down into the dark, landing quietly even with her stiff right knee. It didn’t hurt anymore, but it felt sort of… creaky. Her cane was strapped across her back—it was too hard to incorporate into her fighting style, but she wanted it handy in case she needed to use the single Dust round loaded into it.

Daily landed lightly beside her, and then Lavender’s heavier tread followed. The faint moonlight shining through the hole above them was the only source of light.

Daily took the lead, Lavender and Emerald each taking one of his hands as his night vision guided him through the winding darkness. The walls around them, Emerald knew, were familiar to him and Lavender, who’d spent the past few weeks mapping the labyrinth during the day, but she could see nothing in the inky blackness, and the fear of stepping in a pothole and wrenching her knee made her tread cautiously.

The chill, humid air clung to her hair and her skin and her jacket and felt like the cold sweat that gripped her during nightmares. The last time she’d ventured down into these caves, she had broken herself. She’d been so certain it would work.

What if she was just fooling herself again? What if—

 _No._ Emerald forced herself to take a deep breath of the frigid air, even if it just felt like a cold rag pressed to her face.

The first time she’d gone in against Rex, she’d taken a bullet to the gut. And now she was here and he was a shitty public art display.

 _I_ do _fuck up._

_But I learn, too._

The tunnel opened up suddenly into the wide, cavernous space where Emerald’s aura had broken. The metal staircase plunged up into the wall to the right of them, and fire Dust torches lined the walls.

“So.” Lavender slouched back against the wall of their tunnel. “We wait?”  
  
Emerald nodded, keeping her eyes fixed on the staircase. “We wait.”

Daily sat on the floor of the tunnel, shuffling and reshuffling his deck of cards, making them flit from hand to hand like wrens. The constant, quiet whir of it was the only sound in that dim, echoing space.

Emerald didn’t relax. No matter how long this stakeout got—and they’d packed enough provisions to see it through even if it ended up lasting a week—she’d stay focused. She’d be ready.

But gods, she didn’t want to feel like this for a week.

 _C’mon,_ she willed them to appear, _all those sleepy, complacent townsfolk full of eggnog. Don’t you just want to rob them blind? Please?_

She watched droplets from the ceiling of the cave fall and splash into the puddle at the foot of the stairs, counted the time between ripples.

_Seventeen seconds._

_Thirteen._

_Eighteen._

_Twenty._

_Ten._

Emerald wasn’t sure how many drops she had counted when the rumbling of boots on metal sounded from overhead.

Daily had already stacked up his cards and slipped them back into his pocket, his ear upright and alert. He must have heard them first.

Emerald curled her hands around _Thief’s Respite_ and braced herself for another headache. Even with contingencies in place, they hadn’t been able to find a way out of Emerald needing to use her Semblance on several people at once.

Lavender’s hand closed on her shoulder. “You got this, Green,” she whispered.

“So do you,” said Emerald.

“…telling you, the deep-fried turkey is better! Even Greygal thought so.”

“Dad’s right, Clark.”

“This is _heresy,_ Alyson, and I will not hear another word of it.”

The Tabards emerged out into the cave in heavy boots and cargo pants and ugly holiday sweaters, the very antithesis of all that Roman Torchwick held dear.

Honestly, Emerald figured the aesthetic clash was his motive for wanting to see them take a fall even more than the fact that they’d shattered his kneecap a decade or so back.

There was no sign of Griselda. It was time.

Emerald's mind snapped out to its limits, her Semblance seizing all three of the Tabards as Lavender and Daily, now invisible to them, slipped out of the tunnel.

Lavender kept close behind Daily’s shoulder until he got within a couple yards of the Tabards, and then she went motionless, knives drawn, as Daily darted in closer.

Clark, they’d decided, would be the hardest mark to dupe, so Daily made for him first, before the Tabards had a chance to notice anything odd.

A long, slim blade extended from _Kid Gloves,_ and with a deft, spinning motion, Daily sliced through the lining of Clark’s pocket and, with his other hand, caught the scroll before it could hit the ground.

_Couldn’t have done it better myself._

Emerald’s head pounded as he moved on to Miller, sliding under the club—which Miller was pretending to eat like it was a turkey leg—and slashing through his pocket, too, grabbing up the scroll and miraculously not slipping into the mud.

Emerald found herself breathing a sigh of relief, even as pain started to drill down into her forehead. Sonny was the easiest mark by far. All Torchwick’s intel pointed to that. She even had her eyes closed, for gods’ sakes, one of her horse ears flicking a little.

An hour, and then Mercury.

Daily slipped around to Sonny’s blind spot and flicked his wrist—

—and then her hand closed around it.

 _Thief’s Respite_ flashed out in an instant as Sonny twisted like a python and flung Daily over her shoulder.

“Dad! Thieves!”

Emerald kept her Semblance running but cut back the energy she gave to it. She let herself fully appear but left Lav and Daily blurred. This heist had her fingerprints all over it anyway. The Tabards would have come after her sooner or later, even if the job had gone perfectly.

But Lav and Daily didn’t need targets on their backs.

They’d handle the fighting today. And she’d protect them from the cost. Emerald’s skull throbbed, and she took in a deep breath, let it out through her teeth.

This was going to be a long fight.

Daily just managed to get his legs under him and glide to a halt on the muddy floor as one of Lavender’s knives whipped past him and struck Sonny in the shoulder.

Sonny snarled and caught the knife by the handle only for it to glow purple and drag her forwards as Lavender rocketed toward her, scoring another slice across her chest and dragging the free knife out of her hand.

Miller let out a cry, and before Emerald could open her mouth to shout a warning, his club swept over Sonny’s head and struck Lavender in the gut, sending her flying backwards. Her Semblance was the only thing that kept her from slamming back into the wall, allowing her to float to the ground beside Emerald instead, bracing an arm over her stomach.

“Glad I didn’t have that sandwich,” she wheezed. “Thing packs a hell of a punch.”

Emerald glanced down at her knees. “You don’t say.”

The first day they’d gone to train with Torchwick, he’d raised his cane to shoulder height and fired two HE rounds at Lavender point-blank. She’d hit the ground wheezing and cursing his name.

But her aura hadn’t so much as flickered.

 _“Excellent.”_ Torchwick had clapped his hands together and turned to Emerald. _“Put that one up against Miller.”_

“‘M okay,” Lavender said now, straightening up and readying her knives. “Now I’ve got some anger to work out.”

“Percussive therapy,” Daily put in as he slid into a fighting stance on Emerald’s other side. “Very effective.” But his eyes were anxious and watchful as they fixed on the Tabards.

“You thought you could trick me _again?!”_ Sonny’s cheerful face had gone harsh with rage, and she kipped up, her spear glowing ominously as her father and Clark stood on either side of her and moved forward, shielding her from the intruders. “I’m not just going to let my family down like that!”

Miller patted his pocket with a sheepish expression. Clark was doing the same, and the look he aimed at Daily was downright murderous, the torchlight flickering on his glasses.

“We’re not going to let ours down either,” Daily said quietly.

A stillness hung in the damp air, one grieving, hardscrabble family staring down another.

There was a decent chance that Daily had the Key already. But Emerald wasn’t taking chances when it came to Mercury. Not anymore.

Miller moved first, and the whistling of his club through the air made Emerald wince and stumble back a step, struggling to make her concentration hold, to calm the twinging in her knees. Lavender rushed to meet him, both longknives digging into the heavy, gnarled wood before it could collide with her face.

Two throwing stars rushed from Clark’s sleeves toward her, gleaming with electricity Dust, but then Daily was there, parrying them out of the air as sparks ran up his wrist launchers and fizzled out when they hit the insulators between his arm and the metal.

After Emerald had shared the design specs for Marcus Black’s weapon, they’d all upgraded their own to be resistant to electricity.

Emerald fired off a couple potshots at Sonny, forcing her to back away from the main conflict, and she upped her Semblance just a little, making Sunny’s whole world blurry and indistinct.

If she could keep the Tabards from teaming up two-on-one against either Lav or Daily, they could win this.

Miller was bearing down hard with his club, making Lavender’s feet sink into the earth, his own planted and unwavering.

And then Lavender’s Semblance had its say.

Emerald couldn’t help but smirk at the way the big man’s eyebrows shot up in surprise and alarm as his feet left the ground and he crashed into the roof of the cavern, cratering it. Lavender didn’t give him a chance to recover, speeding up after him with her knives flashing.

On the ground, Daily was flipping and twisting and dodging for dear life, Clark’s heat-seeking throwing stars pursuing him like a murmuration of swallows. Emerald could see the frustration on his face—there was no way to land a hit through that swarm. He twisted under the latest pass and then launched himself into the air, spinning and jutting his arms out while the swarm was still beneath him.

Clark yelled and staggered back two steps as the invisible blades of _Kid Gloves_ struck him in the chest and drove him back, but two of his blades circled around and slashed across Daily’s arm, crackling with electricity and making him cry out.

Emerald fired two rounds at Clark with her left revolver, one of them connecting, and kept her right trained on Sonny, who was still leaning against the far wall behind them, struggling to dodge Emerald’s shots while trapped in the grip of her Semblance.

 _I’m not much better off._ The pounding in Emerald’s skull and the intermittent flares of pain in her knees made just keeping her feet a struggle.

Sonny pulled her scroll from her pocket, and Emerald nearly fired before she remembered that shooting that scroll, if it was the copy that carried the Key, would doom Mercury.

“Boss!” Sonny shouted down the line. “Tunnels! Backup! N—”

Emerald changed directions and shot her in the wrist. The scroll fell to the floor.

But now the clock was running.

Miller went crashing to the ground, Lavender plunging after him and spinning with her knives in a reverse grip, slashing them across his chest. Two of Clark’s shuriken caught her in the side, and she toppled to the ground as Clark himself was yanked off his feet, an unseen cable of _Kid Gloves_ coiling around his wrist and wrenching him forward so that Daily’s foot caught him in the face, knocking his glasses askew and fracturing the left lens.

Before Emerald could so much as smirk, though, Miller’s club slammed into Lavender’s gut as she stumbled to her feet and sent her flying across the cavern. She crashed into the wall beside the staircase and hit the ground hard, landing huddled on her knees.

Miller charged her, and with a snarl, she linked both her knives together at the handles and threw them at him. He dodged with ease, and Emerald was about to fire every round she had straight at Miller’s head when she caught a glimpse of the sharp, anticipatory smirk on Lavender’s face.

Emerald started running for Sonny, firing as the other girl tried to reach for her scroll where it lay on the ground and striking her in the wrist again.

She had to get that godsdamn Key before the backup Sonny had called could arrive.

To Emerald’s right, the little crystal of grav Dust set into a bracelet on Lavender’s wrist glowed purple. Her knives, now over halfway across the cave and spinning so quickly that they had become a silver circle scything through the air, reversed course and raced past Emerald’s nose.

Just as Miller reached her, sweeping his club upward for an overhand strike, Lavender spun and twisted up onto her hands—Miller’s feet left the ground, caught by her Semblance—the knives buzzed like a hornets’ nest—

Lavender kicked out and slammed both booted feet into Miller’s gut in a move that was pure Mercury just as her knives dug in between his shoulder blades. The big guy went head over heels, careening back toward the cavern’s center as Lavender caught her knives and plunged after him, holding him suspended in place as she dove at him, again and again, blades flashing.

To Emerald’s left, Daily was lashing out with his wrist launchers and keeping clear of Clark’s right side, making the crack in the left lens of the guy’s glasses work to his advantage, as the shuriken that Clark hurled after him couldn’t home in and pursue him on that side.

But now, Clark seemed to be switching targets.

_Shit._

Emerald ducked a throwing star and felt it whine past her ear, drew up short to avoid another, and she barely had time to register the crafty look on Clark’s face before Lavender went slamming into her right side with a gasp of pain as Miller finally lined up a solid shot with his club.

Both girls crashed to the ground, Emerald letting out a scream and squeezing her eyes shut as she struggled to keep her Semblance afloat, to keep Lav and Daily hidden. Sprawled out on her stomach and pinned beneath Lavender, it was all she could do.

Somewhere to her left, Daily cried out in alarm, and Emerald opened her eyes to see him dodging over to Clark’s good side, trying to draw his fire.

The weight on her back shifted, and she twisted around to see Miller sweeping his club into the air and cleaving it down at them both. Lavender staggered upright, her stance unsteady, her knives loose in her hands as her aura flickered and died, and the club was coming down fast, too fast, and no no _no,_ she couldn’t lose someone she loved.

_Please, not again._

From behind, she just made out Lavender’s jaw clenching as she angled her head forward. The club slammed down on her horns with a _crack!_ , driving her feet into the mud.

And then both of Lavender’s knives rammed up into Miller’s gut, making scarlet aura shatter into nothing. Her horns followed the blades as she sprang under his guard headfirst, and he let out a retching sound and crumpled to the ground.

Lavender glanced over her shoulder at Emerald, who now realized her mouth was hanging open in amazement.

“Complimentary crash helmet,” Lavender said, a proud, if slightly winded, smile on her face. She tapped one of her horns with the flat of a knife and then sheathed it and offered Emerald a hand up. “‘s what I was built for.”

Emerald caught the hand gratefully, her head still buzzing. Lavender brought her foot back and down into Miller’s head, striking him unconscious, and with a sigh of relief, Emerald let that thread of her Semblance fizzle out.

Only to curse the next second when Sonny’s spear jabbed up toward her gut. Emerald barely twisted out of the way, and Lavender staggered back. Sonny pivoted, going after Lavender, but Emerald flicked _Thief’s Respite_ into kama form and hooked the blade around the spear to drag it off course, Miller’s words echoing in her head.

_We’re family, and I am sick to death of people fucking with that._

Sonny spun to face her head-on, and a jet of flame shot out of the end of the spear. Emerald twisted again as the fire licked past her elbow, trying to get inside Sonny’s guard, only for the other end of the spear to whip forward and catch her in the gut.

Emerald retreated after Lavender. On the other side of the cavern, Daily was struggling under the onslaught of Clark’s blades, and Emerald had an idea.

It’d take a little more power, a little more pain, but she could stomach it. She knew her limits now, and they were… okay, they were close, but this would be _cool_ if it worked.

Emerald kept retreating, leading Sonny away from Daily and Clark.

She needed her to be desperate enough to break out the range option full-force.

Emerald’s eyes met Daily’s across the cavern, and she nodded once, silently signaling him to be ready to shift tactics. As Sonny made another lunge with her spear, Emerald ducked and whirled around her, upping her Semblance and forming it into a new illusion while Sonny spun to pursue her.

Over Emerald’s shoulder, Sonny now saw Clark hitting the ground hard, his glasses broken, with Daily standing over him and drawing his fist back, ready to shoot a blade straight through his eye—if Sonny had known Daily at all, she’d have been able to call bullshit on the illusion then and there, because Daily would never have a look that bloodthirsty on his face.

But Sonny didn’t know Daily.

So she screamed out, _“No!”_ and chucked her spear dead at the illusion of Daily, the whole weapon bursting into flames from point to haft—

And striking Clark, who was standing in the place of the illusion, making him crash to the ground in a flash of blue-grey aura.

The real Daily was already grappling across the ceiling by his wrist launchers, landing behind Sonny, and slicing the scroll out of her pocket. She whirled around just in time to receive a right cross to the jaw that shattered her aura and knocked her out cold.

“…sorry,” Daily said, shaking out his hand and pocketing the scroll.

Emerald grabbed his arm in one hand and Lavender’s in the other, too wired to even feel triumph. “Let’s move.”

They sprinted away from the sprawled forms of the Tabards, making for their escape tunnel. Footsteps resounded on the metal staircase, and Emerald sped up, her pulse pounding even as her head swirled with the relief of not having to keep up her Semblance any longer.

She reached the mouth of the tunnel, her right knee clicking a little as she ran, with Lav and Daily right behind her. Almost there.

They’d just vanished up into the shadows of the tunnel when—

 _“Mom!”_ Daily pitched to his knees and seized Emerald’s arm with both hands, halting her as his fingers dug into her skin. His ear was flat against his head, his eyes wide and swimming with tears. “You need to get down, they’ll _see you!”_ His voice was a panicked wail.

Emerald froze, uncomprehending. Beside her, Lavender wore a similarly puzzled frown, glancing over her shoulder.

“Day, come on,” she said, “we don’t have time to—”

The tough, urgent look on Lavender’s face melted away, her eyebrows slanting upwards, her mouth wobbling.

“Wait!” Lavender spun around toward the tunnel’s entrance. “Wait, don’t go! _Please!”_ Emerald barely managed to loop her free arm around Lavender’s waist and drag her into a hold as she struggled to run back down into the cavern. _“Please, come back!”_

Emerald dug in her heels, her knees aching. Even without aura, Lavender was stronger than she was, bigger and taller and entirely muscle, every bit of it struggling like mad to run back the way they’d come

_“Mom, get down!”_

_“I can get rid of them if they’re bad, just don’t go!”_

Immobilized by her friends, Emerald looked over her shoulder, back out into the cavern.

In the dim blood-light of the fire stood a young woman dressed all in silver, her hair gleaming the same color. A black eyepatch stood out against the pale skin on the right side of her face, a livid scar jutting through it vertically. The hair and skin at her temple beside the patch seemed almost white. In the guttering torchlight, her uncovered eye seemed nothing more than a round, gleaming blackness. A furrow of concentration—or maybe rage—ran between her eyebrows, and she radiated an aura of _not right not right not right_ that made Emerald want to run.

Griselda Argent was smiling.

As someone who could “eat her for breakfast” drew a long, sharp-bladed polearm from her back, Emerald’s mind raced, seeking out any plan that would keep that blade from getting closer.

When Torchwick had first briefed Emerald on all the Tabards, he’d shown her their pictures. Griselda’s had had two deep brown eyes. The eyepatch was a recent addition, then.

Emerald was willing to bet that Marcus Black and his godsdamned razor wire were the cause of that scar running down her face.

Lavender pleading and struggling, Daily shrinking in on himself and crying out, all as Griselda calmly leveled her polearm with her shoulder and sighted down the scope that popped out of it, struck terror into Emerald.

But more than that, it struck fury.

That cool smile was so like the one that Marcus Black had worn, walking out of his house as he left his son’s soul in shreds. Like the one Rex Aurum had, when he’d smashed through her roof to find her trapped and helpless on the ground.

She was just done, so fucking _done,_ with people who smiled at the sight of pain. With people hurting her friends.

With the world throwing up wall after wall, monster after monster, between her and Mercury.

No more.

So, Griselda could make people relive their worst memories. Fine.

Two could play at that game.

In one last outpouring of her Semblance, Emerald reached out for the mind behind the sights of that rifle and sank talons into it.

Alyson Rothschild lay on the floor of the cavern, her heavy red skirt spilling like blood around her. Brunnhilde Argent dropped to the ground beside her, mouth moving like she was trying to speak as her voice drowned under the ebb of blood escaping through the gash the wire had made.

A single brown eye widened.

And then Marcus Black came racing out of the tunnel’s mouth toward Griselda, white eyes cold with intent, _Phobos_ flashing upward, the wire heading straight for the one eye Griselda had left.

The polearm hit the ground as a cry escaped Griselda’s mouth, as her hands fled up to shield her face.

Emerald’s aura shattered in a burst of green.

In her arms, Lavender stopped struggling. Daily’s grip went slack.

Emerald seized the cane from over her shoulder and braced it across her forearm, trained it on the earth at the roof of the tunnel’s entrance, and fired.

She didn’t wait to see the explosion. The thunder of falling rocks in her ears was enough.

Instead, she grabbed Lav and Daily by the arms and ran like the God of Darkness was behind them. Her knee creaked and clicked when it met the uneven floor of the tunnel, but she couldn’t stop now.

She couldn’t let her friends fall to another monster.

The firelight of the cavern died behind them, a wall of earth dividing them from the girl who wanted to see them dead.

At the sight of the stars shining through the skylight at the end of the tunnel, Emerald nearly let out a sob of relief, but the darkness behind her was all too deep.

“Go,” she said, heaving Daily toward the ladder set in the wall. He still looked shaky and disoriented, but he nodded breathlessly and began to climb while Emerald turned and faced the darkness, _Thief’s Respite_ drawn and ready to fire.

Lavender followed Daily. Nothing moved in the shadows.

Emerald clambered up last, and every second she spent with her back to the tunnel, she expected a bullet to bite into her back, a hand to clamp around her neck. But there was nothing.

When she dragged herself over the last rung and back out onto the pavement, flinging herself down on her stomach as Lavender heaved the trapdoor shut.

For a moment, all three of them just lay there, still breathing hard. Then Daily wiped the tears from his eyes and pulled three glowing blue scrolls from his pocket.

They’d done it.

The Key was theirs.

“I,” Lavender declared, sitting down hard in the middle of the road, “wanna sleep for a week.” Her eyes were bloodshot, her head lolling on her shoulders.

“Aye aye,” said Daily, who looked nearly as bad despite being the only one of them with any aura left.

Even though she was headed back there on purpose, she couldn’t help but be relieved that Griselda’s Semblance hadn’t had a chance to plunge her back into Marcus Black’s house, into the sight of Mercury lying on the couch, and the overwhelming tide of fucking _uselessness_ she’d felt, and—

Emerald stood up, chest itching. “I’ll get you guys back to the apartment and then…”

_Mercury._

No more walls. No more monsters. She’d jumped through every hoop, passed every test.

She was going to go see her best friend.

She was barely present for the run back to the apartment, for all of them stumbling and holding each other upright as exhaustion got the better of them, for Daily swiping each of the stolen scrolls at their door in turn until he found the one that made it silently swing open and placing it in her hands.

“Go,” he said, his eyes still red with tears, a cautious smile on his face. “Find him.”

Lavender handed Emerald the small, cloth bundle they’d agreed she should bring with her. “Yeah,” she said. “Get him back here so I can bully him into reading _Sentinels_ with me.”

“I will,” said Emerald. They’d agreed that she would go alone, on the reasoning that whatever condition Mercury was in, he wouldn’t want to experience anything even vaguely resembling a crowd.

 _“Besides, I want to be far, far away in case you guys end up sucking face.”_ Lav had gotten a punch in the arm for that one.

The door closed, leaving Emerald alone in the hallway.

The fight was over, but her heart was beating even harder now, pumping more of that static through her veins. She found herself patting at her hair, nervously, stupidly glad that she’d bundled her locs up into a loop at the back of her head so they wouldn’t get too mud-stained.

The rest of her, though, _yikes._

She shook her head, starting off down the hall, thunking her way down the stairs and mentally cursing Mr. Butterman for not repairing the elevator even though Daily had put in seventeen immaculately polite maintenance requests and Lavender a dozen less polite ones.

What she looked like now didn’t matter, she knew that, but—

It was the only difference that she could control, and so, so many things were different now.

Could Mercury forgive her for taking so long? she wondered as she set out into the twinkling lights of the downtown holiday decorations - into winter winds that cut deep into the leather of her jacket.

_Will I still be the person he cared about?_

_Will he still be -_

That was a stupid thought. Of course, he would be. Of course.

And again, she was running, like she had five months ago, running for a house that belonged to blood and liquor and evil and the person she loved most in the world, not knowing which of those things she would find, only that she couldn’t stop until she found them.

The skyscrapers dwindled to bungalows. The cars vanished from the driveways.

She was standing in the yard. A vague gold light shone through the one-way windows of the house. She took a step forward, then another. Another.

If Tukson’s intel was wrong and Marcus was home, she’d be really screwed. And if the Atlesian wildcard that none of their best inferences had been able to make any sense out of was there, things would get interesting in a way that Emerald was pretty sure would be bad.

But she hadn’t come this far to turn back.

She stepped up onto the porch and reached out for the deadbolt, sliding it aside with a sneer of disgust for everything that too-heavy little bit of metal stood for.

When she held the Skeleton Key up to the lock, tumblers whispered against wood, sliding aside. Emerald turned the doorknob slowly and pulled. The house—its dim overhead lights, its lingering smell of whiskey—opened, and she stepped a foot up into the carpet, struggling out of her boots and leaving them on the porch so there wouldn’t be footprints.

From around the corner in the kitchen came the quick, methodical sound of something being diced into pieces. It went abruptly silent as the door clicked shut behind Emerald.

Incapable of bracing herself, Emerald rounded the corner, letting the kitchen light fall on her face.

“Thought you could sneak up on me, you—”

Mercury’s face was harder than she’d remembered, his brows furrowed in a scowl, his jaw tight, his mouth set in a snarl. His hand was clenched around a small paring knife, like he was ready to shove it into somebody’s eye if he needed to.

His eyes landed on her, and he froze, that half-feral look locked into place. Emerald froze, too.

Did he still know her? Did she still know him?

She let her eyes move from his face, now, trying to search out clues in the set of his shoulders, in the shirt that let the scars on his arms show, and—

_Oh._

For a split second, the fact that Mercury was wearing shorts threw her for a loop more completely than the fact that the legs that emerged from them gleamed like the knife in his hand, all steel and chrome and refracted light.

Her fingers tightened around her cane.

No wonder his face was set like that. No wonder the knife in his hand didn’t waver.

The guilt and sorrow and fucking _rage_ that welled up in Emerald at the thought of that monster taking her best friend’s legs—that had kicked a cashier in the forehead, that had driven Rex Aurum into the bricks, that had flung themselves casually over her own as she read—nearly made her crumple to the floor and scream.

The whole time she’d been gone, the world had taken and taken and _taken_ from Mercury. Gods, what could she possibly give him back that could be worth what he’d suffered without her?

Her eyes flicked back up to his face to find that it had changed. It was wearing an expression that she knew—not from the moment he’d nearly kicked her in the face when they were little, but the moment after, when his eyes had gone wide and his fists were starting to fall to his sides and he’d said, in a weird, hiccupping voice, “I’m sorry.”

Emerald’s chest ached and her throat went tight, and her eyes stung, because after every horrible thing the world had done to him, to both of them, Mercury was standing in front of her, and he was still Mercury.

And even covered in mud and out of breath and leaning on her cane, she was still herself.

She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move her eyes from his face. The moment trapped her like a fly in amber.

Mercury could speak, though. His voice came out strained and hoarse and careful, but he spoke all the same.

“Emerald…”

The knife clattered to the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My children... they're in the same scene again... I get to write them interacting again... It's been eighty-four years... *sobs*
> 
> Okay, it's actually been two months, but that is still far, far too long. I'm so relieved to have them back together it's unreal, and I hope you guys enjoy.
> 
> And you can tune in tomorrow evening (or, evening as defined by American Central Time), for Mercury's perspective on the past month! As always, thank you so much for reading, and I'm excited to talk with you guys in the comments :D


	28. Get It Back, Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mercury is not okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's part two! 
> 
> cw: Dissociation, violence, referenced child abuse

Argus was fucking cold.

Cold hadn’t been something Mercury minded before, not after a childhood of mountain winters, but his prosthetics minded the cold, and that meant that Mercury did too. Even with the fire Dust weave in the pants Watts had given him, the metal had cooled down enough to bite at his legs and make him shiver.

He was probably also shivering because he’d taken one look at the jacket Watts had left him in the bullhead and tossed it out the window the second they were above the ocean.

It had been black and grey like Mercury liked. It probably would have fitted like a glove. But Watts had taken the liberty of printing an emblem onto it, an emblem that wasn’t so unlike the one Mercury had stitched for himself.

Except the wing had been torn from the boot and was being crushed beneath it instead.

_“The little bird thinks a pair of new wings will let him fly his cage, but then the bars go on and on forever.”_

Just looking at it had made Mercury’s breathing go too shallow, Callows’s voice, his fucking laugh, echoing in his ears. It had taken him at least ten white-knuckled minutes with his eyes squeezed shut to slow his breathing, to make his lungs feel like a fist wasn’t crushing them.

Mercury got the fucking message. He didn’t need to wear it around on his back.

_You’re what I make you, boy. Nothing else._

Even here, thousands of miles away from Marcus, an ocean and two continents between them, Mercury was every bit as trapped as he had been while he’d been fighting Ari Dunai in his old man’s shadow, even if this warmly lit street festival looked nothing like the jagged fangs of rock that had framed that fight.

If he failed, Watts would know. If he chickened out and let the target run to safety, Watts would track her down again. If he ran…

Every scenario where he fought back or tried to twist free ended with him lying flat on his back, immobilized by pain, this time with no hope of ever getting up again. Every person he refused to kill would end up dead anyway, just by Marcus’s hand instead of his.

So he wasn’t going to shed any fucking tears over it.

All he had now was the power to hit back, and he wasn’t going to throw it away.

The crowd swirling around him chattered and babbled and laughed, kids hauling their parents over to see booths full of hand-painted wooden toys, teens clustered around street magicians, tossing coins into hats, all caught up in the glow of the lanterns and the smell of the snowfall.

He could remember what it was like, to be caught up like that, to move without thinking about it, without fear, in those moments when Emerald—

He cut off that train of thought.

Mercury couldn’t trust crowds. Too many faces, too many intentions to try to read all at once. It made his head ache the same way having to read serif fonts did. His target was here, somewhere, in this mass of people, and he had to keep his eyes sharp, even as he scanned every passerby for furrowed brows, for snarls. Anyone in this whole chattering throng could be a threat.

He flinched when something brushed past his right leg, his hands curling into fists as his heart beat faster.

But it was just a kid—a tiny, purple-haired boy sprinting toward one of the street magicians with a paper cup of hot chocolate in his right hand.

“Olly!” A high voice called out from just behind Mercury, and then a small girl trotted around him, a similar cup clutched carefully in both hands. “You’re gonna spill it!”

“Am not!”

He spilled it.

Mercury bit back a laugh. How many times had Em taken that funny, indignant tone with him when they were that little? Gods, when she’d bought that hot cocoa for them both the day they robbed the bell-ringer, she’d had to stand on tiptoe just to get her chin over the counter and slap down the lien, but she’d looked so proud when she’d turned around with the cups in her hands, and Mercury wouldn’t have spilled it and wasted it for the world, and—

_And she’s_ gone.

He needed to get better at stopping those kinds of thoughts before they happened, before they could make him feel things he couldn’t afford.

He needed to be steel all the way through now, and that soft feeling that Emerald put into his chest would only get him chopped to bits again.

And there, right where the kids had stopped running, pulling a seemingly never-ending scarf from her mouth in a way that looked extremely un-fun, was the target. She had a name. Mercury wasn’t going to think it.

She’d been a small-scale enforcer for one of the syndicates in Mistral, though she’d started out as a pickpocket _and Mercury pressed the door shut on every thought he had about pickpockets_. She’d seen too much of something that Watts didn’t want her to see, and she’d booked a one-way ticket to Argus.

There were no Maura Ellwoods on the list of targets Watts had given him. No Vardan Roosevelts. Mercury couldn’t help but wonder if Watts was easing him into the job, setting him up against people who’d broken promises and taken lives. People whose deaths could be passed off as justice.

Not that justice was something Mercury had ever given a shit about.

He wondered if, as the missions kept on, the people on the lists would slowly grow kinder, nobler, more like the people he’d wanted to be. If it would happen so gradually that he wouldn’t even notice. If, by the time he noticed, he would even be able to care.

But this target was clever with a knife. And her hands weren’t any cleaner than Mercury’s.

Yet here she was in the middle of a fair, bowing extravagantly as coins fell into the hat at her feet and the little spilled-on boy and his cautious friend bounced giddily in place at the sight of her act.

Like the life she’d had was something she could just move on from.

Mercury wasn’t that deluded.

It was past ten o’clock, now. The fair was winding down.

She’d have to pack up that act sooner or later. Split off from the crowds and take the long, dark walk alone back to her tiny apartment in the shabby part of town.

And Mercury would have to do his job, just like she’d done hers.

He stayed on the fringes of the crowd as it slowly dispersed, trying to always keep a tent or two between himself and the target. He even stopped by a booth that sold comics and picked up the latest issue of _X-Ray and Vav._ He ambled around pretending to read it—to look like someone who wasn’t a threat. Like a person who still got to read comic books with Lavender and bitch about the writing when it was shitty and who wasn’t five months behind on the plot because he’d been busy having his soul ripped out and his legs cut off and his entire existence confined to a single stinking house.

Like a person he wasn’t anymore.

The two kids with the cocoa were the last around the target to dissipate. The target wound her long scarf around her neck and turned away into the dark.

Marcus would’ve used the scarf to strangle her. He would’ve thought it was poetic.

Mercury, when it came to it, just kicked a bullet right into the base of her skull before she even had a chance to know she was being followed. It was quick and—

Not clean.

It was never clean.

The scarf still fluttered in the breeze after she went still.

Mercury went back to the apartment Watts had rented him and laid on his back in the darkness until it was day. Even with the drops Watts had given him, he wasn’t sure if he slept or not. Either way, everything was just black.

At noon, he had a train to catch, and someone to shove off of it.

He guessed he should get lunch before then. The noodle place down the street smelled good.

He ate noodles, and he caught the train, and he sent a balding man with nervous eyes plummeting down into an icy ravine while the guy was trying to move between cars to get to the bathroom.

He had noodles again when he got back to Argus.

Watts had marked him down for two days off, after that, to “explore the culture.” He’d given Mercury a series of must-see locations to visit—“After all, I can’t have you simply falling into any common tourist trap, not when the finest anthropological museum devoted to the cultural exchange between Atlas and”—but Mercury had zoned the hell out.

In his two “culture days,” Mercury didn’t leave his room except to shamble out for noodles. He did some push-ups. He took his pills. He checked his prosthetics for any signs of wear from the frost. He never once opened the _X-Ray and Vav_ comic.

When it was time for him to board the bullhead that would take him south to Mistral, he left the comic lying on the nightstand to gather dust.

As the weeks went by and his jobs moved steadily southward, the world got greener, like it was coming back to life as Mercury moved over it.

Nothing else came back to life, that was for damn sure.

The pilot tried to make small talk, sometimes. Mercury never said anything back.

He moved, and he did what he was built to do.

That was all he could afford.

That was all.

When the bullhead flew him back across the ocean, he’d left fourteen graves behind.

When the door of the house bolted shut behind him, sealed tight by the pilot’s hand and that stupid fucking scroll lock, the numbness that had wrapped around him like a cloak loosened a little under a spark of fear.

Marcus was gone, Mercury knew that, but—

The house still smelled like him. Like iron and whiskey. So Mercury’s shoulders stayed tense, and his legs twinged, and his heart skipped a couple of beats.

It was okay, he told himself. He’d jumped through Watts’s hoops. Proved his “efficacy.” He wasn’t Marcus’s chew-toy anymore.

Watts showing up in the Seer Grimm sure as hell didn’t put him any more at ease. Neither did Watts remotely unlocking the garage door and staring while Mercury took off _Talaria_ and surrendered them to the cupboard where Marcus had always kept them. They were Watts’s to use, now, and there was no reason for them to be walking around on Mercury’s feet when they weren’t in use.

When he wasn’t in use.

There was a debrief after that. Mercury had nothing to say. It had all gone smoothly. If there was anything about putting a bullet through someone that could be called smooth. And Watts was saying words but Mercury wasn’t hearing them as anything but that, as sounds that ran together and rose and fell in pitch and meant nothing. But even though it meant nothing, Watts still managed to talk and talk and talk, probably berating him for not checking out the correct tourist sites and giving him a detailed rundown of the “culture” he’d missed until it was black outside and Mercury’s stomach was gnawing at itself.

The sounds droned on and on so long that Mercury was ready to scream.

He wasn’t sure why this angry pressure was building in his chest as he sat here on the couch. No one had done anything to him. He wasn’t hurt. Okay, he did hurt, but that—that was old news.

Maybe it was the house, the smell of it. Maybe it was the fact that he wanted to slump down on his mattress and not be poked at. To sink quietly into the thoughtless dark like he had every night for the past month.

There was only one question he wanted answered, and none of the words trailing out of the Seer Grimm lined up with it.

The complacency that passed for patience which had carried Mercury this far in the conversation gave out.

Without waiting for a break in Watts’s lecture on… Central Animan carnivorous plant species?... he said, “Marcus.”

“And then of course the locals’ fear of the plants began to translate into new and _fascinating_ forms of Grimm, and—what?”  
  
“My ‘trial period,'” Mercury said. “It’s complete. So what are we doing with him?”

Watts chuckled. “That question is founded on a number of rather bold assumptions, young man.”

Mercury’s lip curled. “I proved myself, didn’t I? I’m not weak. I’m not going to chicken out of a kill like a stupid kid. You don’t need him.”

_Not when you have me._

_I—I can’t have done this for nothing._

Watts _tsk_ ed. “Mercury, your father has shown himself capable of regularly disposing of seasoned Huntsmen, even when outnumbered. I’m sorry to say that your… extermination of the rats of Mistral is hardly a comparable feat. And until your abilities reach that point, I see no reason to destroy a tool that has proven useful without an adequate replacement at hand.”

Mercury found himself baring his teeth. “I did everything you asked, you—” he cut himself off before he could call Watts something that would hurt his case.

“You didn’t visit the Metallurgical Society of—”

_“I killed fourteen people for you!”_ Mercury bolted to his feet, his hands clenching into fists and his shoulders hunching.

Watts’s smug grin made Mercury want to tear his head off his shoulders with his bare hands. “Now, Mr. Black, I was under the impression that you didn’t have scruples about your job.”

“I don’t,” Mercury spat, the swirl of anger in his chest tightening.

He didn’t. He couldn’t. He’d done what he had to do to not be helpless.

To prove he was better than Marcus.

_Better—how?_

“Then why does it matter how many people you’ve killed?” Watts asked, the grin turning into something calmer, more dangerous.

“It—” Mercury’s jaw worked.

_Because I don’t want to—_

_Because I feel—_

_Because—_

Weak, weak, weak, all the way down. Mercury nearly choked on his own disgust. With himself or Watts or both, he wasn’t sure.

“Because.” He forced his voice to be level. “Fourteen lives for one feels like a fair trade to me. And I don’t like getting screwed over.”

“Well, young man, you have a lifetime of practice with it,” Watts said coolly. “Another year or so shan’t make much difference in the long run. Not if you’re the assassin you claim to be.”

“But—”  
  
“This conversation is over, Mercury. And if it continues…” Watts stared straight into Mercury’s eyes, his gaze piercing, a forcible reminder of the first time they’d met, of the talon leveling itself with his eye… “There are other uses to which you can be put. Remember that. Oh, and Happy Nondescript Winter Holiday.”

Mercury caught himself stretching out a hand as the Grimm floated away, and he jerked it back in with a sneer of revulsion. He wasn’t going to beg. Not now. Not ever.

And Watts was right. Mercury didn’t give a shit. He didn’t.

And life right now, it was—it wasn’t bad. Nobody screamed at him or threw bottles at his head or pinned him the floor and punched till his eye swelled shut just for the hell of it. Sure, it wasn’t _great,_ but—

It just was. And Mercury couldn’t hope for anything more than that.

Gods, he was _tired,_ and he unzipped his pants at the knees to get a look at his prosthetics. A quick inspection told him that there was no reason not to crash into sleep at the earliest opportunity. Any tune-ups would wait.

Before he could reach the hallway, his stomach growled. Food first. Fine.

He’d use it as a chance to deal with the smell. In a match between garlic and liquor, garlic would win.

He had no idea what the fuck else he was going to eat, but he’d start there.

There were still a few cloves left in the cupboard, thank gods. The microwave, which had had a tendency to scurry forward and clank itself against his forearm before, had skulked away into a corner. As he drew nearer, it shuffled back, grating its sides against the walls, and he noticed now a dent in the top of it that wasn’t too different from the shape of Marcus’s fist.

“You finally learned the ropes, huh, buddy,” Mercury said as he laid a clove out on the cheap plastic cutting board he’d picked up from the LargeMart when he was eleven. The microwave stayed silent and motionless.

He was going to need a knife.

He tried to open the drawer as silently as possible. The rattling of the blades against each other, he’d learned the hard way, made the _stay-still-stay-still_ pain grip him all over again. He only looked at the drawer out of the corner of his eye, and he avoided the larger knives, the ones that looked too much like the one that had—

Well, that one.

He closed the drawer just as carefully—maybe he should get Watts to invest in a knife block so he wouldn’t have to fuck with that—and got to chopping.

It was… not nice, exactly. Things weren’t _nice_ anymore. But it let his mind move in a different pattern, one that wasn’t a straight, relentless line, or a spiral with no end. It was quiet and methodical and for himself.

That wasn’t so bad.

And then the front door clicked shut, and that brief feeling of levelness fell out from under Mercury’s feet.

_Marcus._

No one else could have come through that door. Mercury whirled on the spot, heart pounding against his ribs, his grip on the knife so tight it almost hurt.

Trust Marcus to strike the second he got back. He was stupid for not anticipating it, and he wasn’t ready, he was going to _lose,_ and he had to say something, some parting shot before Marcus found some new part of him to rip away.

“Thought you could sneak up on me, you—”

The person who rounded the corner in Marcus’s place couldn’t possibly be real. Watts had somehow cooked up some kind of illusion to test him, or Mercury had just shoved so many thoughts of her so far down that the box he crammed them into had broken open so that he saw her in all the wrong places.

It couldn’t really be her. Those bright red eyes that were fixed on his face couldn’t be hers. That mud-stained jacket wrapped around her shoulders couldn’t be the same one he’d cried into. That slight flexing of her fingers as she froze in her tracks—that scar he could see where her shirt rode up that he’d made digging a bullet from her—that loose coil of green locs at the back of her head—

It was all impossible.

_She_ was impossible.

Emerald wasn’t coming back.

Those eyes were moving over him now, tracking downward, widening for a split second as they took in his prosthetics. There was a cane in her hand—why would his mind make that up? Where were her boots?

Emerald wasn’t coming back.

She was covered in dirt from shoulder to shin, like she’d clawed her way straight up out of the earth to find him, but that was impossible.

Emerald wasn’t coming back.

It was impossible.

_A clank!, and Piper crashed to the ground to reveal Emerald standing behind her, still breathing heavy as she brandished her pick._

_“You know you’re not a monster either, right?” she said, gently nudging his shoulder with her own. He’d thrown her down and made her cry, and she still said that with perfect certainty._

_He came flying through her wall after he’d cut her to the bone with his words, and the first thing she did was hold him._

_Her aura twined between his ribs and woke his up again, when she should have given up, when she should have run from the knife-sharp, broken edges of him._

Emerald had always been impossible.

Her eyes flicked up to his face again. Because of course they were her eyes. There wasn’t anybody else they could belong to. Something in his throat tightened, and something under his ribs creaked.

Impossible. Here. There was only one name for that, and he couldn’t stop himself from saying it.

“Emerald…”

The knife clattered to the floor.

* * *

Emerald felt like her knees were going to give out. Not from her injuries—from the fact that the iron grip of rage and anxiety that had held her rigidly upright for months was suddenly gone.

She could sink, now. She could breathe, she could rest.

Because Mercury—

His hands were softening, the fingers spreading a little. His eyes, they’d softened too. They were fixed on her own, all the familiar little flecks of silver in them gleaming under the lamplight. His mouth was half-open now, like he wanted to say more but couldn’t. He looked almost pained, and her chest ached, and staying still became just as impossible as moving had been a moment before.

Because there was still a space between them. Because the air in that space still crackled with fear and uncertainty, and Mercury’s chest was rising and falling too fast, and that space needed to be _gone._

Everything that stood between them needed to be gone.

Emerald took a slow step forward, then another, keeping her eyes locked on Mercury’s. His fingers twitched a little when she started moving, his breath hitching in something that was almost a flinch.

Okay.

She kept her movements slow and deliberate, leaning her cane against the counter, keeping her hands in sight, where he could keep track of them, as she took a shaky step onto the linoleum. She tried, with her bad knee, to keep her gait from lurching too much, to hold back any movements that might look sudden.

The whole time, she kept her eyes on his face, that little nick through his left eyebrow, the way his mouth shifted up on the left more than on the right, like it was made to smirk even when he didn’t mean to—all the tiny quirks and angles that had become as familiar as the quickness of her own hands, made new again in this light.

She stopped a handspan away from him, her chin tilting up to meet his gaze.

She didn’t know quite what to do now—if touching him would hurt him, if he even wanted to be touched, even though her arms ached with how much they wanted to wrap around him and pull him close.

So she left it up to him.

Mercury still seemed frozen, though his breathing was getting ragged, his eyes wide with something that might have been fear. His bangs fell forward a little—just like they had nearly a year ago, when their hands had been fitted together on their half-birthday, when his head had started to dip closer to hers.

That same feeling of _are we going to jump_ _?_ overtook her now, and Emerald let herself breathe it in, let herself wait.

She’d lived on the brink for five months now. For him, she could wait a little longer.

* * *

Mercury was unraveling.

The tiny, hopeful almost-smile on Emerald’s face was making the stone-like weight in his chest fracture and give. All the pain and grief and longing that he’d forced into it started roiling through him as it escaped through the breakages in the rock. His feet were still locked into a fighting stance, but the rest of him was shaking.

He had to keep still, he had to.

All Emerald being here meant was that he would lose her, like he lost everything, he couldn’t touch her, it wasn’t safe, even if the hollowness where his Semblance had been felt like a black hole pulling on her, dragging her in.

_Please, I can’t stay empty like this, I have to stay empty like this._

She took a step forward like she could feel that crushing gravity too, and _No!_ and _Yes!,_ and he needed her to run and he needed her to never leave, and he stayed where he was and he shook.

Gods. He’d killed fifteen people. And she’d never look at him with this soft glow in her eyes again if she knew what he was now, but just looking at her forced him to be someone who’d once been a dumb little kid, running too fast through a crowd with hot cocoa.

To be someone who’d been good at something other than killing.

_I’m not. I tried and I tried and I’m not._

She was getting closer now. He couldn’t move his eyes from her. Small things kept standing out, making her more real as the distance between them shrank. Her necklace was askew, and muddied like the rest of her, and it had changed, the fragments of the jade cat from Woodhaven hanging on either side of the bullet that had nearly killed her. Now that she’d set aside the cane, she moved with a slight limp, every step she took with her right foot hesitant and jerky. Something about that made a tearing feeling in his chest.

How many months had she wasted trying to find him? How many risks had she taken? How many bruises had piled up on her skin?

How much had she done in the name of someone who Marcus Black had torn up by the foundations? Who was just a hollow, ransacked shell of the boy she’d—

Gods, she was close now, and the smell of sweat and dirt clung to her—she was real, she was _real_ —but under that was the bright, always-there citrus smell of her hair, of her terrace, of the only decent sleep he’d ever gotten as a kid, and this feeling, in his chest, like an atrophied muscle trying to bear weight again, he thought it might have been happiness.

She stopped so close to him that it was maddening. What was she doing? What did she want him to do? His pulse was thudding in his ears, and her eyes were still soft, and he didn’t understand what he was supposed to do with this hurricane inside of him, what she wanted from him, and she still wasn’t moving, what was she _waiting_ for, and—

Oh.

A choice.

She was giving him a choice.

The stone in his chest cleaved in half, and Mercury felt like he would break along with it, like the relief would crush his lungs. He didn’t know that relief was a feeling that could crush. All the air rushed out of him and then flooded back in in a gasp. He couldn’t breathe in anything other than gasps. Maybe he’d forgotten how.

Emerald didn’t shy away. She was still there. Steady, waiting, her hands floating at her sides.

And through all the noise and gasping and unraveling inside him, he knew what he wanted to do, and he didn’t stop to think if he deserved it.

He wrapped his arms around her waist, and he clung to her like he was drowning.

_Please make me a shape that makes sense._

The second he’d moved, her arms had sprung up, too, curving around his neck and crossing behind it so tightly that it lifted her feet off the ground—he could feel the dulled sensation of her toes drumming against his shins. He tightened his grip, trying to crush that hollow, whirling feeling in his chest beneath her, to let the weight of her trap his heart inside of his ribs—trying to print the shape of her into himself so that it would stay even after she was gone, like everything always ended up gone.

He stumbled back a couple steps, his back running up against the counter—she’d had more momentum than he’d expected, and she wasn’t gone right now. She wasn’t gone. Her face was pressed into the hollow beneath his ear, and there was a solid, wiry strength in her arms, and her jacket was as cold as the December winds she must have run through to get here.

He wanted to say, “Thank you,” and, “You need to leave,” and, “I missed you so much,” and, “I’m not like you left me,” and “Please, still love me,” and, “Please, don’t love me.”

But all he could manage, through the gasping, were two words that came out wheezing and pathetic, torn up by whatever the fuck was happening in his chest. At least they were true.

“You’re here.”

* * *

Mercury was as warm as she’d remembered. Even in this horrible, bloodstained house, it was easy to bury her face in his neck and feel like she was _home._

His heart beat wildly against her chest, the feeling echoing in the pulse at his throat. He was gripping her so tightly that she could barely breathe, that every gasp that shuddered out of him shook her, too.

After months of having to wonder what he was doing, how he felt, she knew. She could feel it for herself.

“You’re here.” The words were a thin exhale just above her ear, and she could tell, in the tightness of his shoulders and the brief clench of his jaw, how much effort it had taken him to make them.

She was. And gods, now that she’d found him, she wasn’t going fucking anywhere. She tightened her own hold on him, burrowing deeper into his collar. No matter how many times he fell apart, she would hold him together.

She didn’t know how to say that without sounding like a melodramatic weirdo, without making him pull away.

So instead she slid a hand through the soft, fluffy hair at the back of his head in a way that she hoped was soothing, and said, “I’m here.”

* * *

Emerald’s jacket was starting to thaw, the slight shiver he’d felt under it relaxing into nothing. The fingers that were slipping gently through his hair didn’t feel so chilly anymore. That little softening of her shoulders, that small, contented hum she’d made—he’d done that. He’d made her warm.

The grin that stretched across his face at the thought almost hurt. He was still breathing in those weird, whooping gasps, but he didn’t feel so much like he was being crushed anymore. He felt the opposite. Like a boot had been lifted off his chest right as his vision had started to tunnel and now he was raking in all the air he could because that weight was finally, finally gone.

Speaking of air, that weird little hiccup in Emerald’s breathing probably meant she was running out of it. He could barely bring himself to loosen his arms enough to let her get a breath and sink back down to the floor.

His chest ached, and he was weirdly, stupidly scared that she’d back away, that she’d vanish into smoke now that they weren’t crushed so tightly together that he could barely tell which heartbeat was his own. But she didn’t back away. Her hands just glided down his shoulders—carefully, she was always so careful—and then hooked around his back, pulling herself back in close to him.

It had been so, so long since anyone had been careful with him. Since a hand had come toward him that wasn’t clutching a knife or curled into a fist.

He glanced down at Emerald, the way she’d tilted her brow against his jaw, the way her eyes had fallen shut and a brittle smile had crossed her face.

Fireworks burst across the sky of his memories.

_You are everything good in my world._

And she was trembling. He’d been shaking too hard himself to notice it at first, but she was, all over—her hands shaking as she pressed them into his back, her whole body shivering in his arms, and not from cold, he didn’t think. Her necklace rattled against his chest, those little fragments of jade clicking against each other.

He remembered the look on her face when she’d first strung the bullet onto that thin cord of leather, the fierce resolve in her eyes even while she was lying, clammy and feverish, on the floor of Tukson’s office.

From the instant she’d hung that bullet around her neck, she’d given every waking second to bringing down Rex Aurum with an intensity that almost scared Mercury. And he knew then, with absolute certainty, that that same look had crossed her face after she’d beaded the fragments of that tiny, years-old gift onto the line. That she’d spend every moment after that fighting through mud to get back to him.

And that she was just as sure as he was, right now, that if she let go of him he would dissolve into nothing.

He knew. He knew how much she cared, how much she’d done. He needed her to know that.

So he did something that his training had never meant him to do.

He ran one of his hands up and down between her shoulder blades, slowly, and the shivering lessened a little. Her fingers had felt so nice in his hair. Maybe—

He let his other hand drift upward until it cradled the back of her head, keeping it tucked against his shoulder as his fingers slid carefully over the soft coils of her hair.

He wasn’t going to vanish into smoke. He had a shape. And he was good at this, and this wasn’t killing. He was good at holding Em and making bread and reading comic books, and he would keep holding her as long as she let him.

He said it again, a little calmer this time. Where it had felt like a question before, it felt like a promise.

“You’re here.”

* * *

How long they stayed that way, neither of them was sure.

But it was long enough that they reached a kind of equilibrium. Her breathing out when he breathed in, breathing in when he breathed out. A push and pull and give and take that came out fair in the end.

And they kept saying the words, over and over again like a chorus, breathing them into each other like oxygen.

“You’re here.”

“I’m here.”

“You’re here.”

“I’m here.”

“You’re here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *heaves sigh of relief* I've reunited the two children!
> 
> But boy do they have a lot to work through...
> 
> And in my haste to get us here, I've expended the entirety of my buffer. So, I'm now writing this fic as I post, which means updates may get a little irregular, though I'm going to try to keep putting out one a week, in the Friday/Saturday window if possible. Still, I don't want to trade off quality for speed, so things might slow down a bit in terms of the posting schedule. I can't believe we've only got five chapters left to go! And we've made it through the darkest act! 
> 
> Thank you all so, so much for reading, especially through these past few chapters and all the horrors therein. As always, I'm excited to talk with you guys in the comments <3


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